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Title: The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 05 - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English
Author: Various
Language: English
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VOLUME V
THE GERMAN CLASSICS
Masterpieces of German Literature
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
Patrons' Edition IN TWENTY VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
1914
CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS
VOLUME V
* * * * *
Special Writers
FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D., Professor of Philosophy, Cornell
University: The Romantic Philosophers--Fichte, Schelling, and
Schleiermacher.
GEORGE H. DANTON, PH.D., Professor of German, Butler College: Later
German Romanticism.
Translators
PERCY MACKAYE, Dramatist and Poet: Departure; Would I were Free as
are My Dreams.
A.I. DU P. COLEMAN, A.M., Professor of English Literature, College
of the City of New York: Taillefer; The Lion's Bride; The Crucifix;
The Old Singer; From My Childhood Days; The Invitation; A Parable;
At Forty Years; etc.
MARGARETE MÜNSTERBERG: Selections from The Boy's Magic Horn; Union
Song; The Mother Tongue; Spring Greeting to the Fatherland; Freedom;
Charlemagne's Voyage; Chidher; etc.
HERMAN MONTAGU DONNER: Lützow's Wild Band; Cavalryman's Morning
Song.
LOUIS H. GRAY, PH.D.: Addresses to the German Nation.
FREDERIC H. HEDGE: The Destiny of Man; The Wonderful History of
Peter Schlemihl; The Golden Pot.
GEORGE RIPLEY: On the Social Element in Religion.
J. ELLIOT CABOT: On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature.
MRS. A.L.W. WISTER: From the Life of a Good-for-nothing.
MARGARET HUNT: The Frog King, or Iron Henry; The Wolf and the Seven
Little Kids; Rapunzel; Haensel and Grethel; The Fisherman and His
Wife.
F.E. BUNNETT: Selections from Undine.
H.W. DULCKEN: Song of the Fatherland; The White Hart; Evening Song;
Before the Doors.
C.T. BROOKS: Men and Knaves; Prayer During Battle; Song of the
Mountain Boy; The Chapel; etc.
W.W. SKEAT: The Shepherd's Sang on the Lord's Day; The Hostess'
Daughter; The Good Comrade.
W.H. FURNESS: The Lost Church; The Minstrel's Curse.
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW: The Luck of Edenhall; Remorse; The Castle by
the Sea.
KATE FREILIGRATH-KROEKER: On the Death of a Child.
C.G. LELAND: The Broken Ring.
ALFRED BASKERVILLE: Morning Prayer; The Castle of Boncourt; Woman's
Love and Life; The Spring of Love; etc.
BAYARD TAYLOR and LILIAN BAYARD TAYLOR KILIANI: The Women of
Weinsberg; Barbarossa; the Grave of Alaric.
JOHN OXENFORD: The Sentinel.
LORD LINDSAY: The Pilgrim Before St. Just's.
BAYARD TAYLOR: He Came to Meet Me.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME V
The Romantic Philosophers--Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher.
By Frank Thilly
Friedrich Schleiermacher
On the Social Element in Religion. Translated by George Ripley
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The Destiny of Man. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge
Addresses to the German Nation. Translated by Louis H. Gray
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature. Translated by J. Elliot
Cabot
* * * * *
Later German Romanticism. By George H. Danton
Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano
The Boy's Magic Horn. Selections translated by Margarete Münsterberg.
Were I a Little Bird
The Mountaineer
As Many as Sand-grains in the Sea
The Swiss Deserter
The Tailor in Hell
The Reaper
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Fairy Tales. Translated by Margaret Hunt.
The Frog King, or Iron Henry
The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids
Rapunzel
Haensel and Grethel
The Fisherman and His Wife
Ernst Moritz Arndt
Song of the Fatherland. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
Union Song. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Theodor Körner
Men and Knaves. Translated by C.T. Brooks
Lützow's Wild Band. Translated by Herman Montagu Donner
Prayer During Battle. Translated by C.T. Brooks
Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf
The Mother Tongue. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Spring Greeting to the Fatherland. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Freedom. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Ludwig Uhland
The Chapel. Translated by C.T. Brooks
The Shepherd's Song on the Lord's Day. Translated by W.W. Skeat
The Castle by the Sea. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
Song of the Mountain Boy. Translated by C.T. Brooks
Departure. Translated by Percy MacKaye
Farewell. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
The Hostess' Daughter. Translated by W.W. Skeat
The Good Comrade. Translated by W.W. Skeat
The White Hart. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
The Lost Church. Translated by W.H. Furness
Charlemagne's Voyage. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Free Art. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Taillefer. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Suabian Legend. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
The Blind King. Translated by C.T. Brooks
The Minstrel's Curse. Translated by W.H. Furness
The Luck of Edenhall. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
On the Death of a Child. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker
Joseph von Eichendorff
The Broken Ring. Translated by C.G. Leland
Morning Prayer. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Translated by Mrs. A.L.W. Wister
Adalbert von Chamisso
The Castle of Boncourt. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
The Lion's Bride. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Woman's Love and Life. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
The Women of Weinsberg. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani
The Crucifix. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Old Singer. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Old Washerwoman. From the _Foreign Quarterly_
The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
The Golden Pot. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge
Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué
Selections from Undine. Translated by F.E. Bunnett
Wilhelm Hauff
Cavalryman's Morning Song. Translated by Herman Montagu Donner
The Sentinel. Translated by John Oxenford
Friedrich Rückert
Barbarossa. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani
From My Childhood Days. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Spring of Love. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
He Came to Meet Me. Translated by Bayard Taylor
The Invitation. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Murmur Not. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
A Parable. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Evening Song. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
Chidher. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
At Forty Years. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Before the Doors. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
August von Platen-Hallermund
The Pilgrim Before St. Just's. Translated by Lord Lindsay
The Grave of Alaric. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani
Remorse. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
Would I were Free as are My Dreams. Translated by Percy MacKaye
Sonnet. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME V
Heidelberg
Friedrich Schleiermacher. By E. Hader
The Three Hermits. By Moritz von Schwind
Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By Bury
Volunteers of 1813 before King Friedrich Wilhelm III in Breslau. By F.W. Scholtz
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. By Carl Begas
The Jungfrau. By Moritz von Schwind
The Magic Horn. By Moritz von Schwind
Ludwig Achim von Arnim. By Ströhling
Clemens Brentano. By E. Linder
The Reaper. By Walter Crane
Wilhelm Grimm. By E. Hader
Jacob Grimm. By E. Hader
Hänsel and Gretel. By Ludwig Richter
Ernst Moritz Arndt. By Julius Röting
Theodor Körner. By E. Hader
Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf
Ludwig Uhland. By C. Jäger
The Villa by the Sea. By Arnold Böcklin
Leaving at Dawn. By Moritz von Schwind
Joseph von Eichendorff. By Franz Kugler
Adalbert von Chamisso. By C. Jäger
The Wedding Journey. By Moritz von Schwind
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hofmann. By Hensel
Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué
Wilhelm Hauff. By E. Hader
The Sentinel. By Robert Haug
Friedrich Rückert. By C. Jäger
Memories of Youth. By Ludwig Richter
August Graf von Platen-Hallermund
The Morning Hour. By Moritz von Schwind
THE ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHERS--FICHTE, SCHELLING, AND SCHLEIERMACHER
By FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell
University
The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had implicit faith in
the powers of human reason to reach the truth. With its
logical-mathematical method it endeavored to illuminate every nook and
corner of knowledge, to remove all obscurity, mystery, bigotry, and
superstition, to find a reason for everything under the sun. Nature,
religion, the State, law, morality, language, and art were brought
under the searchlight of reason and reduced to simple and self-evident
principles. Human institutions were measured according to their
reasonableness; whatever was not rational had no _raison d'être_;
to demolish the natural and historical in order to make room for
the rational became the practical ideal of the day. Enlightenment
emphasized the worth and dignity of the human individual, it sought to
deliver him from the slavery of authority and tradition, to make him
self-reliant in thought and action, to obtain for him his natural
rights, to secure his happiness and perfection in a world expressly
made for him, and to guarantee the continuance of his personal
existence in the life to come. In Germany this great movement found
expression in a popular commonsense philosophy which proved the
existence of God, freedom, and immortality, and conceived the universe
as a rational order designed by an all-wise and all-good Creator for
the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded
Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all
speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to
pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in
Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in
England, where it had developed the empiricism of Locke, it came to
grief in the scepticism of Hume. If we can know only our impressions,
then rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible, and
it is futile to philosophize about God, the world, and the human soul.
Consistently carried out, the logical-mathematical method seemed to
land the intellect in Spinozism or in materialism--in either case to
catch man in the causal machinery of nature. In this dilemma many were
tempted to throw reason overboard as an instrument of ultimate
truth, and to seek for certainty through other functions of the human
soul--in feeling, faith, or mystical vision of some sort; the claims
of the heart and will were urged against the proud pretensions of the
intellect (Hamann, Herder, Jacobi). Another way of escape was found
by substituting the organic conception of reality for the
logical-mathematical view of the _Aufklärung_; nature and life,
poetry, art, language, political, social, and religious institutions
are not creations of reason, not things made to order, but
organic--products of evolution (Lessing, Herder, Winckelmann, Goethe).
Man, himself, moreover, is not mere intellect, but a being in whom
feelings, impulses, yearnings, will, are elements to be reckoned with.
And reality is not as transparent as the Enlightenment assumed it to
be; existence divided by reason leaves a remainder, as Goethe had put
it.
It was Immanuel Kant who tried to arbitrate between the conflicting
tendencies of his age. He was an _Aufklärer_ in so far as he brought
reason itself to the bar of reason and sat in judgment upon its
claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective
validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to
the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity
of scepticism and the _Schwärmerei_ of mysticism. He repudiated the
shallow proofs of the existence of God, freedom, and immortality
no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its
atheism, fatalism, and hedonism. He tried to save everything worth
saving--rational knowledge, modern science, the basal truths of
the old metaphysics, and the most precious human values. For
the scientific intelligence, so he held, nature and the self are
absolutely determined; every physical occurrence and every human act
are necessary links in a causal chain. But such knowledge is
possible only in the field of phenomena (_Erscheinungen_); through
sense-perception and the discursive understanding we cannot reach the
inner core of reality; nor can we pierce the veil of appearances by
means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith,
i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is
the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that
points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and
assures us of our freedom, immortality, and God. It is because we
possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom
and an ideal kingdom in which purpose reigns are vouchsafed to us, and
that we can free ourselves from the mechanism of the natural order.
It is moral truth that both sets us free and demonstrates our freedom,
and that makes harmony possible between the mechanical theory of
science and the teleological conception of philosophy. The scientific
understanding would plunge us into determinism and agnosticism; from
these, faith in the moral law alone can deliver us. In this sense
Kant destroyed knowledge to make room for a rational faith in a
supersensible world, to save the independence and dignity of the human
self and the spiritual values of his people. In claiming a place
for the autonomous personality in what _appeared to be_ a mechanical
universe, Kant gave voice to some of the deeper yearnings of the age.
The German Enlightenment, the new humanism, mysticism, pietism,
and the faith-philosophy were all interested in the human soul, and
unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or
metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by
the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism,
sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy
between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Schelling, and
Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many
respects, but they all glorified the spirit, _Geist_, as the living,
active element of reality, and they all rejected the intellect as
the source of ultimate truth. They followed him in his
anti-intellectualism, but they did not avoid, as he did, the
attractive doctrine of an inner intuition; according to them we can
somehow grasp the supersensible in an inner experience which Fichte
called intellectual, Schelling artistic, Schleiermacher religious. The
bankruptcy of the intelligence was overcome in their systems by the
discovery of a faculty that revealed to them the living, dynamic
nature of the universe. They were all more or less influenced by the
romantic currents of the times, seeking with Herder and Jacobi an
approach to the heart of things other than through the categories
of logic. Like Lessing and Goethe, they were also attracted to
the pantheistic teaching of Spinoza, though rejecting its rigid
determinism so far as it might affect the human will. They likewise
accepted the idea of development which the leaders of German
literature, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had already opposed to the
unhistorical _Aufklärung_, and which came to play such a prominent
part in the great system of Hegel.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Ramenau, Oberlausitz, May 19, 1762,
the son of a poor weaver. Through the generosity of a nobleman,
the gifted lad was enabled to follow his intellectual bent; after
attending the schools at Meissen and Schulpforta he studied theology
at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg with the purpose
of entering the ministry. His poverty frequently compelled him to
interrupt his studies by accepting private tutorships in families, so
that he never succeeded in preparing him self for the examinations. In
1790 he became acquainted with Kant's philosophy, which two students
had asked him to expound to them, and to which he now devoted himself
with feverish zeal. It revolutionized his entire mode of thought and
determined the course of his life. The anonymous publication of his
book, _Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation_, in 1792, written
from the Kantian point of view and mistaken at first for a work of
the great criticist, won him fame and a professorship at Jena (1794).
Here, in the intellectual centre of Germany, Fichte became the
eloquent exponent of the new idealism, which aimed at the reform of
life as well as of _Wissenschaft_; he not only taught philosophy, but
_preached_ it, as Kuno Fischer has aptly said. During the Jena
period he laid the foundations for his "Science of Knowledge"
(_Wissenschaftslehre_) which he presented in numerous works: _The
Conception of the Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of
the Entire Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of Natural
Rights_, 1796; _The System of Ethics_, 1798--(all these translated by
Kroeger); the two _Introductions to the Science of Knowledge_, 1797
(trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_). The
appearance of an article _Concerning the Ground of our Belief in a
Divine World-Order_, 1798, in which Fichte seemed to identify God with
the moral world-order, brought down upon him the charge of atheism,
against which he vigorously defended himself in his _Appeal to the
Public_ and a series of other writings. Full of indignation over the
attitude which his government assumed in the matter, be offered his
resignation (1799) and removed to Berlin, where he presented his
philosophical notions in popular public lectures and in writings which
were characterized by clearness, force, and moral earnestness rather
than by their systematic form. There appeared: _The Vocation of Man_,
1800 (translated by Dr. Smith); _A Sun-Clear Statement concerning the
Nature of the New Philosophy_, 1801 (trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of
Speculative Philosophy_); _The Nature of the Scholar_, 1806 (trans. by
Smith); _Characteristics of the Present Age_, 1806 (trans. by Smith);
_The Way towards the Blessed Life_, 1806 (trans. by Smith). After the
overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon, in 1806, Fichte fled from Berlin to
Königsberg and Sweden, but returned when peace was declared in
1807, and delivered his celebrated _Addresses to the German Nation_,
1807-08, in which he sought to arouse the German people to a
consciousness of their national mission and their duty even while the
French army was still occupying the Prussian capital.
Fichte was appointed professor of philosophy (1810) in the new
University of Berlin, for which he had been invited to construct a
plan and in the establishment of which he took a lively interest.
During the last period of his life he devoted himself to the
development of his thoughts in systematic form and wrote a number of
books; most of these were published after his death, which occurred
January 27, 1814. Among them we mention: _General Outline of
the Science of Knowledge_, 1810 (trans. by Smith); _The Facts of
Consciousness_, 1813; _Theory of the State_, published 1820. The
Complete Works, edited by his son, J.H. Fichte, appeared 1843-46. New
editions of particular works are now appearing.
The world for Fichte is at bottom a spiritual order, the revelation
of a self-determining ego or reason; hence the science of the ego, or
reason, the _Wissenschaftslehre_, is the key to all knowledge, and we
can understand nature and man only when we have caught the secret
of the self-active ego. Philosophy must, therefore, be
_Wissenschaftslehre_, for in it all natural and mental sciences find
their ultimate roots; they can yield genuine knowledge only when
and in so far as they are based on the principles of the Science of
Knowledge--mere empirical sciences having no real cognitive value.
The ego-principle itself, however, without which there could be no
knowledge, cannot be grasped by the ordinary discursive understanding
with its spatial, temporal, and causal categories. Kant is right: if
we were limited to the scientific intellect, we could never rise above
the conception of a phenomenal order absolutely ruled by the causal
law. But there is another source of knowledge: in an act of inner
vision or intellectual intuition, which is itself an act of freedom,
we become conscious of the universal moral purpose; the law of duty or
the categorical imperative commands us to be free persons. We cannot
refuse to accept this law without abandoning ourselves as persons,
without conceiving ourselves as _things_, or mere products of nature;
the choice of one's philosophy, therefore, depends upon what kind of
man one is--upon one's values, upon one's will. The type of man who
is a slave of things, who cannot raise himself out of the causal
mechanism, who is not free, will never be able to conceive himself
otherwise than as a cog in a wheel. Fichte accepts the ego, or spirit,
as the ultimate and absolute principle, because it alone can give our
life worth and meaning. Thus he grounds his entire philosophy upon a
moral imperative which presents itself to the ego in an inner vision.
He also tells us that we can become immediately aware of the
pure activity of the ego, of our free action, in a similar act of
intellectual intuition. But we cannot know this free act unless we
perform it ourselves; no one can understand the idealistic philosophy
who is not free; hence philosophy begins with an act of freedom--_im
Anfang war die Tat_.
In order that we may rise to free action, opposition is needed, and
this we get in the spatial-temporal world of phenomena, or nature,
which the ego creates for itself in order to have resistance to
overcome. Fichte conceives of nature as "the material of our duty,"
as the obstacle against which the ego can exercise its freedom. There
could be no free action without something to act upon, and there could
be no purposive action without a world in which everything happens
according to law; and such a causal world we have in our phenomenal
order, which is the product of the absolute spiritual principle.
By the ego Fichte did not mean the subjective ego, the particular
individual self with all its idiosyncrasies, but the universal ego,
the reason that manifests itself in all conscious individuals as
universal and necessary truth. In his earlier period he did not define
his thought very carefully, but in time the absolute ego came to be
conceived as the principle of all life and consciousness, as
universal life, and ultimately identified with God. His philosophy is,
therefore, not subjective idealism, although it was so misinterpreted,
but objective idealism; nature is not the creation of the particular
individual ego, but the phenomenal expression, or reflection, in the
subject of the universal spiritual principle.
Upon such an idealistic world-view Fichte based the ethical teachings
through which he exercised a lasting influence upon the German people
and the history of human thought. The universal ego is a moral ego,
an ego with an ethical purpose, that realizes itself in nature and in
man; it is, therefore, the vocation of man to obey the voice of duty
and to free himself from the bondage of nature, to be a person, not a
thing, to coöperate in the realization of the eternal purpose which
is working itself out in the history of humanity, to sacrifice himself
for the ideal of freedom. Every individual has his particular place in
which to labor for the social whole; how to do it, his conscience will
tell him without fail. And so, too, the German people has its peculiar
place in civilization, its unique contribution to make in the struggle
of the human race for the development of free personality. It is
Germany's mission to regain its nationality, in order that it may
take the philosophical leadership in the work of civilization, and to
establish a State based upon personal liberty, a veritable kingdom
of justice, such as has never appeared on earth, which shall realize
freedom based upon the equality of all who bear the human form.
The Fichtean philosophy holds the mirror up to its age. With the
Enlightenment it glorifies reason, the free personality, nationality,
humanity, civilization, and progress; in this regard it expresses the
spirit of all modern philosophy. It goes beyond the _Aufklärung_ in
emphasizing the living, moving, developing nature of reality; for it,
life and consciousness constitute the essence of things, and universal
life reveals itself in a progressive history of mankind. Moreover,
the dynamic spiritual process cannot be comprehended by conceptual
thought, by the categories of a rationalistic science and philosophy,
but only by itself, by the living experience of a free agent. In the
categorical imperative, and not in logical reasonings, the individual
becomes aware of his destiny; in the sense of duty, the love of truth,
loyalty to country, respect for the rights of man, and reverence for
ideals, spirit speaks to spirit and man glimpses the eternal.
Among the elements in this idealism that appealed to the Romanticists
were its anti-intellectualism, its intuition, the high value it placed
upon the personality, its historical viewpoint, and its faith in the
uniqueness of German culture. They welcomed the _Wissenschaftslehre_
as a valuable ally, and exaggerated those features of it which seemed
to chime with their own views. The ego which Fichte conceives as
universal reason becomes for them the subjective empirical self, the
unique personality, in which the unconscious, spontaneous, impulsive,
instinctive phase constitutes the original element, the more
extravagant among them transforming the rational moral ego into a
romantic ego, an ego full of mystery and caprice, and even a lawless
ego. Such an ego is read into nature; for, filled with occult magic
forces, nature can be understood only by the sympathetic divining
insight of the poetic genius. And so, too, authority and tradition, as
representing the instinctive and historical side of social life, come
into their own again.
Fichte's chief interest was centred upon the ego; nature he regarded
as a product of the absolute ego in the individual consciousness,
intended as a necessary obstacle for the free will. Without opposition
the self cannot act; without overcoming resistance it cannot become
free. In order to make free action possible, to enable the ego to
realize its ends, nature must be what it is, an order ruled by the
iron law of causality. This cheerless conception of nature--which,
however, was not Fichte's last word on the subject, since he afterward
came to conceive it as the revelation of universal life, or the
expression of a pantheistic God--did not attract Romanticism. It was
Schelling, the erstwhile follower and admirer of Fichte, who turned
his attention to the philosophy of nature and so more thoroughly
satisfied the romantic yearnings of the age.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born at Leonberg, Würtemberg,
January 27, 1775, the son of a learned clergyman and writer on
theology. He was a precocious child and made rapid progress in his
studies, entering the Theological Seminary at Tübingen at the age of
fifteen. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two he wrote a
number of able treatises in the spirit of the new idealism, and
was recognized as the most talented pupil of Fichte and his best
interpreter. After the completion of his course at the University
(1795), he became the tutor and companion of two young noblemen with
whom he remained for two years (1796-98) at the University of Leipzig,
during which time he devoted himself to the study of mathematics,
physics, and medicine, and published a number of philosophical
articles. In 1798 he received a call to a professorship at Jena, where
Fichte, Schiller, Wilhelm Schlegel, and Hegel became his colleagues,
and where he entered into friendly relations with the Romantic circle
of which Caroline Schlegel, who afterward became his wife, was a
shining light. This was the most productive period of his life; during
the next few years he developed his own system of philosophy and
gave to the world his most brilliant writings. In 1803 he accepted
a professorship at Würzburg, but came into conflict with the
authorities; in 1806 he went to Munich as a member of the Academy of
Sciences and Director of the Academy of Fine Arts; in 1820 he moved to
Erlangen; and in 1827 he returned to Munich as professor of philosophy
at the newly-established University and as General Curator of the
Scientific Collections of the State. He was called to Berlin in 1841
to help counteract the influence of the Hegelian Philosophy, but met
with little success. He died in 1854.
The earlier writings of Schelling either reproduced the thoughts of
the _Wissenschaftslehre_ or developed them in the Fichtean spirit.
Among those of the latter class we note: _Ideas for a Philosophy of
Nature_, 1797; _On the World-Soul_, 1798; _System of Transcendental
Idealism_, 1800. During the second period, in which the influence of
Bruno and Spinoza is prominent, he works out his own philosophy of
identity; at this time he publishes _Bruno, or, Concerning the Natural
and Divine Principle of Things_, 1802, and _Method of Academic Study_,
1803. In the third period the philosophy of identity becomes the basis
for a still higher system in which the influence of German theosophy
(Jacob Böhme) is apparent; with the exception of _Philosophy and
Religion_, 1804, the _Treatise on Human Freedom_, 1809, and a
few others, the works of this period did not appear until after
Schelling's death. His previous philosophy is now called by him
"negative philosophy;" the higher or positive philosophy has as its
aim the rational construction of the history of the universe, or the
history of creation, upon the basis of the religious ideas of peoples;
it is a philosophy of mythology and revelation. Translations of some
of Schelling's works are to be found in the _Journal of Speculative
Philosophy_, an American periodical founded by W.T. Harris, which
devoted itself to the study of post-Kantian idealism. His Complete
Works, edited by his son, appeared in 14 volumes, 1856. There is a
revival of interest in his philosophy, and new editions of his books
are now being published.
Like most philosophers of note, Schelling reckons with the various
tendencies of his times. With idealism he interprets the universe as
identical in essence with what we find in our innermost selves; it is
at bottom a living dynamic process. If that is so, nature cannot be
a merely externalized obstacle for the ego, nor a dead static spatial
mechanical system; as the expression of an active spiritual principle
there must be reason and purpose in it. But reason is not identified
by Schelling with self-conscious intelligence, for with the
faith-philosophies and Romanticism he takes it in a wider sense; in
physical and organic nature it is a slumbering reason, an unconscious,
instinctive, purposive force similar to the Leibnizian monad,
Schopenhauer's will, and Bergson's _élan vital_. In this way the
dualism between mechanism and teleology is reconciled. Nature is
a teleological order, an evolution from the unconscious to the
conscious; in man, the highest stage and the climax of history, nature
becomes self-conscious. With this organic conception both Romanticists
and many natural scientists of the age were in practical agreement;
it was the view that had always appealed to Goethe--and Herder before
him--and it gained for Schelling a large following. In his earlier
system he regarded nature as a lower stage in the evolution of
reason and sought to answer the problems: How does Nature become
Consciousness or Ego? the problem of the Philosophy of Nature; and,
How does Consciousness or the Ego become Nature? the problem of
Transcendental Idealism. In his philosophy of identity, nature and
mind are conceived as two different aspects of one and the same
principle, which is both mind and nature, subject and object, ego and
non-ego. All things are identical in essence but differentiated in the
course of evolution. It was not inconsistent with these tenets that
Schelling sought, in his last period, to discover the meaning
of universal history in the obscure beginnings of mythology
and revelation rather than in the lucid regions of an advanced
civilization.
With the opponents of rationalism Schelling agrees that we cannot
reach the inner meaning of reality, "the living, moving element
in nature," through the scientific intelligence, but that we must
envisage it in intuition. "What is described in concepts," he tells
us, "is at rest; hence there can be concepts only of _things_ and of
that which is finite and sense-perceived. The notion of movement is
not movement itself, and without intuition we should never know what
motion is. Freedom, however, can be comprehended only by freedom,
activity only by activity." Schelling, who is a poet as well as a
philosopher, comes to regard this intuition or inner vision as an
artistic intuition. In the products of art, subject and object, the
ideal and the real, mind and nature, form (or purpose) and matter,
are one; here the harmony aimed at by philosophy lies before our very
eyes, and may be seen, touched, and heard. The creative artist creates
like nature in realizing the ideal; hence, art must serve as the
absolute model for the intuition of the world--it is the true and
eternal organ of philosophy. Like the artistic genius, the philosopher
must have the faculty for perceiving the harmony and identity in the
universe; esthetic intuition is absolute knowing. Art aims to reveal
to us the profoundest meaning of the world, which is the union of form
and matter, of the ideal and the real; in art alone the striving of
nature for harmony and identity is realized; the beautiful is the
infinite represented and made perceivable in finite form; here mind
and nature interpenetrate. In creative art the artist imitates the
creative act of nature and becomes conscious of it; in esthetic
intuition, or the perception of beauty, the philosophical genius
discovers the secret of reality; nature herself is a poem and her
secret is revealed in art. This philosophy is a far cry from the
logical-mathematical method of the _Aufklärung_; it is a protest
against this, a protest in which the leaders of the new German
literature, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, as well as the Romanticists,
willingly joined. Goethe's entire view of nature, art, and life rested
upon the teleological or organic conception; he, too, regarded the
ability to peer into the heart of things--to see the whole in its
parts, the ideal in the real, the universal in the particular, as
the poet's and thinker's highest gift. He called it an _aperçu_, "a
revelation springing up in the inner man that gives him a hint of
his likeness to God." It is this gift which Faust craves and Mephisto
sneers at as _die hohe Intuition_.
Dass ich erkenne was die Welt
Im innersten zusammenhält,
Schau alle Wirkungskraft and Samen
Und tu' nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
There was much that was fantastic in the _Naturphilosophie_ and much
_a priori_ interpretation of nature that tended to withdraw the
mind from the actualities of existence; it often dealt with bold
assertions, analogies, and figures of speech, rather than with facts
and proofs. But it had its merits; for it aroused an interest in
nature and nature-study, it kept alive the _philosophical_ interest
in the outer world, the desire for unity, _Einheitstrieb_, which has
remained a marked characteristic of German science from Alexander von
Humboldt down to Robert Mayer, Helmholtz, Naegeli, Haeckel, Ostwald,
Hertz, and Driesch. It opposed the one-sided mechanical method of
science, and emphasized conceptions (the idea of development,
the notion of the dynamic character of reality, pan-psychism, and
vitalism) which are still moving the minds of men today, as is
evidenced by the popularity of Henri Bergson, who, with our own
William James, leads the contemporary school of philosophical
Romanticists.
Fichte's chief contribution to German thought was the
_Wissenschaftslehre_, Schelling's the _Naturphilosophie_, and
Schleiermacher's the philosophy of religion. All these thinkers took
account of the prevailing tendencies of the times--_Aufklärung_,
Kantian criticism, faith-philosophy, Romanticism, and Spinozism--and
were more or less affected by them. Schleiermacher also came under the
influence of Fichte, Schelling, and Greek idealism, particularly
of Plato's philosophy; many were the sources from which he drew his
material for the construction of a great system of Protestant theology
that exercised a profound influence far beyond the boundaries of his
country and won for him the title of the founder of the New Theology.
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, the son of a clergyman of
the reformed church, was born at Breslau, November 21, 1768, and was
educated at the Moravian schools at Niesky and Barby. Made sceptical
by the newer criticism, he left the Moravian brotherhood and entered
the University of Halle (1787), where he devoted himself with equal
zeal to the study of theology and philosophy. After his ordination
in 1794 he occupied various pulpits until 1803, when he was made a
professor and university preacher at Halle. In 1806 he removed from
Halle to Berlin, becoming the preacher of Trinity Church in 1809
and professor of theology at the newly founded University in 1810,
positions which he filled with marked ability until his death,
February 12, 1834. It was in Berlin that he came into friendly touch
with the leaders of the Romantic school, Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel,
and Novalis, but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their
extravagances. He distinguished himself as a preacher, theologian,
philosopher, and philologist, and, by his study of the sources of
philosophy, added much to the knowledge of its history. Among the
books published during his life-time are: _Addresses on Religion_,
1799; _Monologues_, 1800; _Principles of a Criticism of Previous
Systems of Ethics_, 1803; translations of Plato's _Dialogues_, with
introductions and notes, 1804-28; _The Christian Faith_, 1821-22.
Complete Works, 1834-64.
Schleiermacher's conception of religion is opposed to the
rationalistic theology of the eighteenth century, as well as to the
Kantian moral theology which has remained popular in Germany to
this day. For him religion is not science or philosophy; it does
not consist in theoretical dogmas or rationalistic proofs; neither
theories about religion nor virtuous conduct nor acts of worship are
religion itself; nor is religion based upon a rational moral faith,
as Kant had taught. He bravely took the part of Fichte in the
atheism-controversy, when the great leaders of German culture, Kant,
Herder, and even Goethe, abandoned him to his fate. He rejected
the shallow proofs of the _Aufklärung_, as well as the orthodox
utilitarian view of God as the dispenser of rewards and punishments,
and showed that the real foes of religion were the rational and
practical persons who endeavored to suppress the yearning for the
transcendent in man and to drive out all mystery in seeking to make
everything clear to him. We cannot have conceptual knowledge of God,
for conceptual thought is concerned with differences and opposites,
whereas God is without such differences and oppositions: he is the
absolute union or identity of thought and being. Religion is grounded
in feeling, or divining intuition; in feeling, we come into direct
relation with God; here the identity of thought and being is
immediately experienced in self-consciousness, and this union is the
divine element in us. Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence
upon an absolute world-ground; it is the immediate consciousness that
everything finite is infinite and exists through the infinite.
The conception of God as the unity of thought and being, and the idea
of man's absolute dependence upon the world-ground, call to mind the
pantheism of Spinoza. Schleiermacher seeks to tone this down by giving
the world of things a relative independence; God and the world are
inseparable, and yet must be distinguished. God is unity without
plurality, the world plurality without unity; the world is
spatial-temporal, while God is spaceless and timeless. He is, however,
not conceived as a personality, but as the universal creative force,
as the source of all life. The determinism implied in this world-view
is softened by giving the individual a measure of freedom and
independence. The particular individuals are subject to the law of
the whole; but each self has its unique endowment or gifts, its
individuality, and its freedom consists in the unfolding of its
peculiar capacities. With Goethe, Schiller, and Romanticism, our
philosopher rejects the rigoristic Kantian-Fichtean view of duty
which, in his opinion, would suppress individuality and reduce all
persons to a homogeneous mass; like them he regards the development
of unique personalities as the highest moral task. "Every man should
express humanity in his own peculiar way in a unique mixture of
elements, in order that it may reveal itself in every possible form,
and that everything may become real in the infinite fulness which
can spring from its lap." "The same duties can be performed in many
different ways. Different men may practise justice according to the
same principles, each man keeping in view the general welfare and
personal merit, but with different degrees of feeling, all the
way from extreme coldness to the warmest sympathy." The command,
therefore, is not merely: Be a person; but: Be a unique person, live
your own individual life. There is no irreconcilable conflict between
the natural law and the moral law, between impulse and reason. For the
same reasons he defends the diversity of religions and the claims of
personal religion; in each unique individual, religion should be left
free to express itself in its own unique and intimate way. His ideal
is the development of unique, novel, original personalities; and these
are expressions of the divine, which rationalism cannot bring under
either its theoretical or practical rubrics.
The individual cannot become conscious of, and prize, his own
individuality without at the same time valuing uniqueness in
others; the higher a value he sets upon his own self, the more
the personalities of others must impress him. "Whoever desires to
cultivate his individuality must have an appreciation of everything
that he is not." "The sense of universality (_der allgemeine Sinn_) is
the supreme condition of one's own perfection." Hence the ethical
life is a life in society--a society of unique individuals who respect
humanity in its uniqueness, in themselves and in others. "They are
among themselves a chorus of friends. Every one knows that he too is
a part and product of the universe, that in him too are revealed
its divine life and action." "The more every one approximates the
universe, the more he communicates himself to others, the more perfect
unity will they all form; no one has a consciousness for himself
alone, every one has, at the same time, that of the other; they are no
longer only men, but mankind; rising above themselves and triumphing
over themselves, they are on the road to true immortality and
eternity." In the feeling of piety man recognizes that his desire to
be a unique personality is in harmony with the action of the universe;
hence that he can, ought, and must make the development of his
uniqueness the goal, the strongest motive, and the highest good,
and that he can surely realize what he is striving for, because the
universe which created and determined him created him for that.
_FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER_
* * * * *
ON THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION (1799) [1]
TRANSLATED BY GEORGE RIPLEY
Those among you who are accustomed to regard religion as a disease
of the human mind, cherish also the habitual conviction that it is an
evil more easily borne, even though not to be cured, so long as it is
only insulated individuals here and there who are infected with
it; but that the common danger is raised to the highest degree,
and everything put at stake, as soon as a too close connection is
permitted between many patients of this character. In the former
case it is possible by a judicious treatment, as it were by an
antiphlegistic regimen, and by a healthy spiritual atmosphere, to ward
off the violence of the paroxysms; and if not entirely to conquer the
exciting cause of the disease, to attenuate it to such a degree that
it shall be almost innocuous. But in the latter case we must despair
of every other means of cure, except that which may proceed from some
internal beneficent operation of Nature. For the evil is attended with
more alarming symptoms, and is more fatal in its effects, when the too
great proximity of other infected persons feeds and aggravates it in
every individual; the whole mass of vital air is then quickly poisoned
by a few; the most vigorous frames are smitten with the contagion;
all the channels in which the functions of life should go on are
destroyed; all the juices of the system are decomposed; and, seized
with a similar feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and
productions of whole ages and nations are involved in irremediable
ruin. Hence your antipathy to the church, to every institution
which is intended for the communication of religion, is always more
prominent than that which you feel to religion itself; hence, also,
priests, as the pillars and the most efficient members of such
institutions, are, of all men, the objects of your greatest
abomination.
Even those among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with
regard to religion, and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder
of the mind, an insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon,
cherish quite as unfavorable impressions of all social organization
for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and
peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism and barren ceremonies--these,
they imagine, are the inseparable consequences of every such
institution and are the ingenious and elaborate work of men, who, with
almost incredible success, have made a great merit of things which are
either nothing in themselves, or which any other person was quite as
capable of accomplishing as they. I should pour out my heart but very
imperfectly before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost
importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point
of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the
perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge
upon religious associations; this is clear as light, in a thousand
utterances of your predominant individuals; nor will I stop to refute
these accusations, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon other
causes. Let us rather submit the whole conception of the church to
a new examination, and from its central point, throughout its whole
extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without regard to what it has
actually been hitherto, or to what experience may suggest concerning
it.
If religion exists at all, it must needs possess a social character;
this is founded not only in the nature of man, but still more in the
nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of
disease, a signal perversion of nature, when an individual wishes to
shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated
by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to
communicate whatever is in him, in the indispensable relations
and mutual dependence not only of practical life, but also of his
spiritual being, by which he is connected with all others of his
race; and the more powerfully he is wrought upon by anything, the more
deeply it penetrates his inward nature, so much the stronger is this
social impulse, even if we regard it only from the point of view of
the universal endeavor to behold the emotions which we feel ourselves,
as they are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain a proof from
their example that our own experience is not beyond the sphere of
humanity.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER]
You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavor to make
others similar to ourselves, nor of the conviction that what is
exhibited in one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to ascertain
the true relation between our individual life and the common nature
of man, and clearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object of this
desire for communication is unquestionably that in which man feels
that he is originally passive, namely, his observations and emotions.
He is here impelled by the eager wish to know whether the power which
has produced them in him be not something foreign and unworthy. Hence
we see man employed, from his very childhood, in communicating those
observations and emotions; the conceptions of his understanding,
concerning whose origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest in
his own mind, and still more easily he determines to refrain from
the expression of his judgments; but whatever acts upon his senses,
whatever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to obtain witnesses,
with regard to that he longs for those who will sympathize with him.
How should he keep to himself those very operations of the world upon
his soul which are the most universal and comprehensive, which appear
to him as of the most stupendous and resistless magnitude? How should
he be willing to lock up within his own bosom those very emotions
which impel him with the greatest power beyond himself, and in the
indulgence of which he becomes conscious that he can never understand
his own nature from himself alone? It will rather be his first
endeavor, whenever a religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a
pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the attention of others
to the same object, and, as far as possible, to communicate to their
hearts the elevated impulses of his own.
If, then, the religious man is urged by his nature to speak, it is the
same nature which secures to him the certainty of hearers. There is no
element of his being with which, at the same time, there is implanted
in man such a lively feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by
himself alone, as with that of religion. A sense of religion has no
sooner dawned upon him, than he feels the infinity of its nature and
the limitation of his own; he is conscious of embracing but a small
portion of it; and that which he cannot immediately reach he wishes
to perceive, as far as he can, from the representations of others who
have experienced it themselves, and to enjoy it with them. Hence,
he is anxious to observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking
to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for every tone which
he recognizes as proceeding from it. In this manner, mutual
communications are instituted; in this manner, every one feels equally
the need both of speaking and hearing.
But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like
that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure
impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this
medium, which, in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb the
greatest proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything
belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced
in the insufficient symbols from which it is intended again to
proceed. Nay, in the written communications of religious feeling,
everything needs a double and triple representation; for that which
originally represented, must be represented in its turn; and yet
the effect on the whole man, in its complete unity, can only be
imperfectly set forth by continued and varied reflections. It is only
when religion is driven out from the society of the living, that it
must conceal its manifold life under the dead letter.
Neither can this intercourse of heart with heart, on the deepest
feelings of humanity, be carried on in common conversation. Many
persons, who are filled with zeal for the interests of religion, have
brought it as a reproach against the manners of our age that,
while all other important subjects are so freely discussed in the
intercourse of society, so little should be said concerning God
and divine things. I would defend ourselves against this charge
by maintaining that this circumstance, at least, does not indicate
contempt or indifference toward religion, but a happy and very correct
instinct. In the presence of joy and merriment, where earnestness
itself must yield to raillery and wit, there can be no place for
that which should be always surrounded with holy veneration and awe.
Religious views, pious emotions, and serious considerations with
regard to them--these we cannot throw out to one another in such small
crumbs as the topics of a light conversation; and when the discourse
turns upon sacred subjects, it would rather be a crime than a virtue
to have an answer ready for every question, and a rejoinder for every
remark. Hence, the religious sentiment retires from such circles
as are too wide for it, to the more confidential intercourse of
friendship, and to the mutual communications of love, where the eye
and the countenance are more expressive than words, and where even a
holy silence is understood. But it is impossible for divine things
to be treated in the usual manner of society, where the conversation
consists in striking flashes of thought, gaily and rapidly alternating
with one another; a more elevated style is demanded for the
communication of religion, and a different kind of society, which is
devoted to this purpose, must hence be formed. It is becoming, indeed,
to apply the whole richness and magnificence of human discourse to the
loftiest subject which language can reach--not as if there were any
adornment, with which religion could not dispense, but because it
would show a frivolous and unholy disposition in its heralds if they
did not bring together the most copious resources within their power
and consecrate them all to religion, so that they might thus perhaps
exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. Hence it is
impossible, without the aid of poetry, to give utterance to the
religious sentiment in any other than an oratorical manner, with all
the skill and energy of language, and freely using, in addition,
the service of all the arts which can contribute to flowing and
impassioned discourse. He, therefore, whose heart is overflowing with
religion, can open his mouth only before an auditory, where that which
is presented, with such a wealth of preparation, can produce the most
extended and manifold effects.
Would that I could present before you an image of the rich and
luxurious life in this city of God, when its inhabitants come together
each in the fulness of his own inspiration, which is ready to stream
forth without constraint, but, at the same time, each is filled with a
holy desire to receive and to appropriate to himself everything which
others wish to bring before him. If one comes forward before the rest,
it is not because he is entitled to this distinction, in virtue of an
office or of a previous agreement, nor because pride and conceitedness
have given him presumption; it is rather a free impulse of the spirit,
a sense of the most heartfelt unity of each with all, a consciousness
of entire equality, a mutual renunciation of all First and Last, of
all the arrangements of earthly order. He comes forward in order to
communicate to others, as an object of sympathizing contemplation, the
deepest feelings of his soul while under the influence of God; to lead
them to the domain of religion in which he breathes his native air;
and to infect them with the contagion of his own holy emotions. He
speaks forth the Divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy silence the
assembly follows the inspiration of his words. Whether he unveils a
secret mystery, or with prophetic confidence connects the future with
the present; whether he strengthens old impressions by new examples,
or is led by the lofty visions of his burning imagination into other
regions of the world and into another order of things, the practised
sense of his audience everywhere accompanies his own; and when he
returns into himself from his wanderings through the kingdom of
God, his own heart and that of each of his hearers are the common
dwelling-place of the same emotion.
If, now, the agreement of his sentiments with that which they feel be
announced to him, whether loudly or low, then are holy mysteries--not
merely significant emblems, but, justly regarded, natural indications
of a peculiar consciousness and peculiar feelings--invented and
celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in its own lofty
language answers to the appealing voice. But not only, so to speak;
for as such a discourse is music without tune or measure, so there
is also a music among the Holy, which may be called discourse without
words, the most distinct and expressive utterance of the inward man.
The Muse of Harmony, whose intimate relation with religion, although
it has been for a long time spoken of and described, is yet recognized
only by few, has always presented upon her altars the most perfect
and magnificent productions of her selectest scholars in honor of
religion. It is in sacred hymns and choirs, with which the words
of the poet are connected only by slight and airy bands, that those
feelings are breathed forth which precise language is unable to
contain; and thus the tones of thought and emotion alternate with each
other in mutual support, until all is satisfied and filled with the
Holy and the Infinite. Of this character is the influence of religious
men upon one another; such is their natural and eternal union. Do
not take it ill of them that this heavenly bond--the most consummate
product of the social nature of man, but to which it does not
attain until it becomes conscious of its own high and peculiar
significance--that this should be deemed of more value in their sight
than the political union which you esteem so far above everything
else, but which will nowhere ripen to manly beauty, and which,
compared with the former, appears far more constrained than free, far
more transitory than eternal.
But where now, in the description which I have given of the community
of the pious, is that distinction between priests and laymen, which
you are accustomed to designate as the source of so many evils? A
false appearance has deceived you. This is not a distinction between
persons, but only one of condition and performance. Every man is a
priest, so far as he draws others around him, into the sphere which he
has appropriated to himself and in which he professes to be a master.
Every one is a layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel and
experience of another, within the sphere of religion, where he is
comparatively a stranger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy,
which you describe with such hatred; but this society is a priestly
people, a perfect republic, where every one is alternately ruler and
citizen, where every one follows the same power in another which he
feels also in himself, and with which he, too, governs others.
How then could the spirit of discord and division--which you regard
as the inevitable consequence of all religious combinations--find a
congenial home within this sphere? I see nothing but that All is One,
and that all the differences which actually exist in religion, by
means of this very union of the pious, are gently blended with one
another. I have directed your attention to the different degrees
of religiousness, I have pointed out to you the different modes of
insight and the different directions in which the soul seeks for
itself the supreme object of its pursuit. Do you imagine that
this must needs give birth to sects, and thus destroy all free
and reciprocal intercourse in religion? It is true, indeed, in
contemplation, that everything which is separated into various parts
and embraced in different divisions, must be opposed and contradictory
to itself; but consider, I pray you, how Life is manifested in a great
variety of forms, how the most hostile elements seek out one another
here, and, for this very reason, what we separate in contemplation all
flows together in life. They, to be sure, who on one of these points
bear the greatest resemblance to one another, will present the
strongest mutual attraction, but they cannot, on that account, compose
an independent whole; for the degrees of this affinity imperceptibly
diminish and increase, and in the midst of so many transitions there
is no absolute repulsion, no total separation, even between the most
discordant elements. Take which you will of these masses which have
assumed an organic form according to their own inherent energy; if
you do not forcibly divide them by a mechanical operation, no one
will exhibit an absolutely distinct and homogeneous character, but the
extreme points of each will be connected at the same time with those
which display different properties and properly belong to another
mass.
If the pious individuals, who stand on the same degree of a lower
order, form a closer union with one another, there are yet some always
included in the combination who have a presentiment of higher things.
These are better understood by all who belong to a higher social class
than they understand themselves; and there is a point of sympathy
between the two which is concealed only from the latter. If those
combine in whom one of the modes of insight, which I have described,
is predominant, there will always be some among them who understand
at least both of the modes, and since they, in some degree, belong
to both, they form a connecting link between two spheres which would
otherwise be separated. Thus the individual who is more inclined to
cherish a religious connection between himself and nature, is yet by
no means opposed, in the essentials of religion, to him who prefers to
trace the footsteps of the Godhead in history; and there will never be
wanting those who can pursue both paths with equal facility. Thus in
whatever manner you divide the vast province of religion, you will
always come back to the same point.
If unbounded universality of insight be the first and original
supposition of religion, and hence also, most naturally, its fairest
and ripest fruit, you perceive that it cannot be otherwise than that,
in proportion as an individual advances in religion and the character
of his piety becomes more pure, the whole religious world will
more and more appear to him as an indivisible whole. The spirit of
separation, in proportion as it insists upon a rigid division, is a
proof of imperfection; the highest and most cultivated minds always
perceive a universal connection, and, for the very reason that they
perceive it, they also establish it. Since every one comes in contact
only with his immediate neighbor, but, at the same time, has an
immediate neighbor on all sides and in every direction, he is, in
fact, indissolubly linked in with the whole. Mystics and Naturalists
in religion, they to whom the Godhead is a personal Being, and they
to whom it is not, they who have arrived at a systematic view of
the Universe, and they who behold it only in its elements or only in
obscure chaos--all, notwithstanding, should be only one, for one band
surrounds them all and they can be totally separated only by a violent
and arbitrary force; every specific combination is nothing but an
integral part of the whole; its peculiar characteristics are almost
evanescent, and are gradually lost in outlines that become more and
more indistinct; and at least those who feel themselves thus united
will always be the superior portion.
Whence, then, but through a total misunderstanding, have arisen that
wild and disgraceful zeal for proselytism to a separate and peculiar
form of religion, and that horrible expression--"no salvation except
with us." As I have described to you the society of the pious, and as
it must needs be according to its intrinsic nature, it aims merely
at reciprocal communication, and subsists only between those who are
already in possession of religion, of whatever character it may be;
how then can it be its vocation to change the sentiments of those
who now acknowledge a definite system, or to introduce and consecrate
those who are totally destitute of one? The religion of this society,
as such, consists only in the religion of all the pious taken
together, as each one beholds it in the rest--it is Infinite; no
single individual can embrace it entirely, since so far as it is
individual it ceases to be one, and hence no man can attain such
elevation and completeness as to raise himself to its level. If any
one, then, has chosen a part in it for himself, whatever it may be,
were it not an absurd procedure for society to wish to deprive him of
that which is adapted to his nature--since it ought to comprise this
also within its limits, and hence some one must needs possess it?
[Illustration: THE THREE HERMITS Moritz Von Schwind]
And to what end should it desire to cultivate those who are yet
strangers to religion? Its own especial characteristic--the Infinite
Whole--of course it cannot impart to them; and the communication of
any specific element cannot be accomplished by the Whole, but only by
individuals. But perhaps then, the Universal, the Indeterminate,
which might be presented, when we seek that which is common to all
the members? Yet you are aware that, as a general rule, nothing can be
given or communicated, in the form of the Universal and Indeterminate,
for specific object and precise form are requisite for this purpose;
otherwise, in fact, that which is presented would not be a reality but
a nullity. Such a society, accordingly, can never find a measure or
rule for this undertaking.
And how could it so far abandon its sphere as to engage in this
enterprise? The need on which it is founded, the essential principle
of religious sociability, points to no such purpose. Individuals unite
with one another and compose a Whole; the Whole rests in itself,
and needs not to strive for anything beyond. Hence, whatever is
accomplished in this way for religion is the private affair of the
individual for himself, and, if I may say so, more in his relations
out of the church than in it. Compelled to descend to the low grounds
of life from the circle of religious communion, where the mutual
existence and life in God afford him the most elevated enjoyment and
where his spirit, penetrated with holy feelings, soars to the highest
summit of consciousness, it is his consolation that he can connect
everything with which he must there be employed, with that which
always retains the deepest significance in his heart. As he descends
from such lofty regions to those whose whole endeavor and pursuit
are limited to earth, he easily believes--and you must pardon him the
feeling--that he has passed from intercourse with Gods and Muses to a
race of coarse barbarians. He feels like a steward of religion among
the unbelieving, a herald of piety among the savages; he hopes, like
an Orpheus or an Amphion, to charm the multitude with his heavenly
tones; he presents himself among them, like a priestly form, clearly
and brightly exhibiting the lofty, spiritual sense which fills his
soul, in all his actions and in the whole compass of his Being. If the
contemplation of the Holy and the Godlike awakens a kindred emotion in
them, how joyfully does he cherish the first presages of religion in
a new heart, as a delightful pledge of its growth even in a harsh and
foreign clime! With what triumph does he bear the neophyte with him to
the exalted assembly! This activity for the promotion of religion is
only the pious yearning of the stranger after his home, the endeavor
to carry his Fatherland with him in all his wanderings, and everywhere
to find again its laws and customs as the highest and most beautiful
elements of his life; but the Fatherland itself, happy in its own
resources, perfectly sufficient for its own wants, knows no such
endeavor.
_JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE_
* * * * *
THE DESTINY OF MAN (1800)
ADAPTED FROM THE TRANSLATION BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE
BOOK III: FAITH
* * * * *
"Not merely to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy
destination." So says the voice which cries to me aloud from my
innermost soul, so soon as I collect and give heed to myself for a
moment. "Not idly to inspect and contemplate thyself, nor to brood
over devout sensations--no! thou existest to act. Thine actions, and
only thine actions, determine thy worth."
* * * * *
Shall I refuse obedience to that inward voice? I will not do it. I
will choose voluntarily the destination which the impulse imputes to
me. And I will grasp, together with this determination, the thought of
its reality and truth, and of the reality of all that it presupposes.
I will hold to the viewpoint of natural thinking, which this impulse
assigns to me, and renounce all those morbid speculations and
refinements of the understanding which alone could make me doubt its
truth. I understand thee now, sublime Spirit![2] I have found the
organ with which I grasp this reality, and with it, probably, all
other reality. Knowledge is not that organ. No knowledge can prove
and demonstrate itself. Every knowledge presupposes a higher as its
foundation, and this upward process has no end. It is Faith, that
voluntary reposing in the view which naturally presents
itself, because it is the only one by which we can fulfil our
destination--this it is that first gives assent to knowledge, and
exalts to certainty and conviction what might otherwise be mere
illusion. It is not knowledge, but a determination of the will to
let knowledge pass for valid. I hold fast, then, forever to this
expression. It is not a mere difference of terms, but a real
deep-grounded distinction, exercising a very important influence on
my whole mental disposition. All my conviction is only faith, and is
derived from a disposition of the mind, not from the understanding.
* * * * *
There is only one point to which I have to direct incessantly all my
thoughts: What I must do, and how I shall most effectually accomplish
what is required of me. All my thinking must have reference to my
doing--must be considered as means, however remote, to this end.
Otherwise, it is an empty, aimless sport, a waste of time and power,
and perversion of a noble faculty which was given me for a very
different purpose.
I may hope, I may promise myself with certainty, that when I think
after this manner, my thinking shall be attended with practical
results. Nature, in which I am to act, is not a foreign being,
created without regard to me, into which I can never penetrate. It is
fashioned by the laws of my own thought, and must surely coincide with
them. It must be everywhere transparent, cognizable, permeable to
me, in its innermost recesses. Everywhere it expresses nothing but
relations and references of myself to myself; and as certainly as
I may hope to know myself, so certainly I may promise myself that I
shall be able to explore it. Let me but seek what I have to seek,
and I shall find. Let me but inquire whereof I have to inquire, and I
shall receive answer.
[Illustration: JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE]
I
That voice in my interior, which I believe, and for the sake of which
I believe all else that I believe, commands me not merely to act in
the abstract. That is impossible. All these general propositions
are formed only by my voluntary attention and reflection directed to
various facts; but they do not express a single fact of themselves.
This voice of my conscience prescribes to me with certainty, in each
particular situation of my existence, what I must do and what I must
avoid in that situation. It accompanies me, if I will but listen to it
with attention, through all the events of my life, and never refuses
its reward where I am called to act. It establishes immediate
conviction, and irresistibly compels my assent. It is impossible for
me to contend against it.
To harken to that voice, honestly and dispassionately, without
fear and without useless speculation to obey it--this is my sole
destination, this the whole aim of my existence. My life ceases to
be an empty sport, without truth or meaning. There is something to be
done, simply because it must be done--namely, that which conscience
demands of me who find myself in this particular position. I exist
solely in order that it may be fulfilled. To perceive it, I have
understanding; to do it, power.
Through these commandments of conscience alone come truth and reality
into my conceptions. I cannot refuse attention and obedience to them
without renouncing my destination. I cannot, therefore, withhold my
belief in the reality which they bring before me, without, at the same
time, denying my destination. It is absolutely true, without
further examination and demonstration--it is the first truth and the
foundation of all other truth and certainty--that I must obey that
voice. Consequently, according to this way of thinking, everything
becomes true and real for me which the possibility of such obedience
presupposes.
There hover before me phenomena in space, to which I transfer the idea
of my own being. I represent them to myself as beings of my own kind.
Consistent speculation has taught me or will teach me that these
supposed rational beings, without me, are only products of my own
conception; that I am necessitated, once for all, by laws of thought
which can be shown to exist, to represent the idea of myself out
of myself, and that, according to the same laws, this idea can be
transferred only to certain definite perceptions. But the voice of
my conscience cries to me: "Whatever these beings may be in and for
themselves, thou shalt treat them as subsisting for themselves, as
free, self-existing beings, entirely independent of thyself. Take
it for granted that they are capable of proposing to themselves aims
independently of thee, by their own power. Never disturb the execution
of these, their designs, but further them rather, with all thy might.
Respect their liberty. Embrace with love their objects as thine
own." So must I act. And to such action shall, will, and must all my
thinking be directed, if I have but formed the purpose to obey the
voice of my conscience. Accordingly, I shall ever consider those
beings as beings subsisting for themselves, and forming and
accomplishing aims independently of me. From this viewpoint, I cannot
consider them in any other light; and the above-mentioned speculation
will vanish like an empty dream before my eyes. "I _think_ of them as
beings of my own species," said I just now; but strictly, it is not a
thought by which they are first represented to me as such. It is the
voice of conscience, the command: "Here restrain thy liberty,
here suppose and respect foreign aims." This it is which is first
translated into the thought: "Here is surely and truly, subsisting
of itself, a being like me." To consider them otherwise, I must first
deny the voice of my conscience in life and forget it in speculation.
There hover before me other phenomena which I do not consider as
beings like myself, but as irrational objects. Speculation finds it
easy to show how the conception of such objects develops itself purely
from my power of conception and its necessary modes of action. But
I comprehend these same things also through need and craving and
enjoyment. It is not the conception--no, it is hunger and thirst and
the satisfaction of these that makes anything food and drink to me.
Of course, I am constrained to believe in the reality of that which
threatens my sensuous existence, or which alone can preserve it.
Conscience comes in, at once hallowing and limiting this impulse of
Nature. "Thou shalt preserve, exercise and strengthen thyself, and
thy sensuous power; for this sensuous power forms a part of the
calculation, in the plan of reason. But thou canst preserve it only
by a suitable use, agreeable to the peculiar interior laws of such
matters. And, besides thyself, there are also others like thee, whose
powers are calculated upon like thine own, and who can be preserved
only in the same way. Allow to them the same use of their portion
which it is granted thee to make of thine own portion. Respect what
comes to them, as their property. Use what comes to thee in a suitable
manner, as thy property." So must I act, and I must think conformably
to such action. Accordingly, I am necessitated to regard these things
as standing under their own natural laws, independent of me, but which
I am capable of knowing; that is, to ascribe to them an existence
independent of myself. I am constrained to believe in such laws,
and it becomes my business to ascertain them; and empty speculation
vanishes like mist when the warming sun appears.
In short, there is for me, in general, no pure, naked existence, with
which I have no concern, and which I contemplate solely for the sake
of contemplation. Whatever exists for me, exists only by virtue of
its relation to me. But there is everywhere but one relation to
me possible, and all the rest are but varieties of this, i.e., my
destination as a moral agent. My world is the object and sphere of my
duties, and absolutely nothing else. There is no other world, no other
attributes of my world, for me. My collective capacity and all finite
capacity is insufficient to comprehend any other. Everything which
exists for me forces its existence and its reality upon me, solely by
means of this relation; and only by means of this relation do I grasp
it. There is utterly wanting in me an organ for any other existence.
To the question whether then in fact such a world exists as I
represent to myself, I can answer nothing certain, nothing which is
raised above all doubt, but this: I have assuredly and truly these
definite duties which represent themselves to me as duties toward such
and such persons, concerning such and such objects. These definite
duties I cannot represent to myself otherwise, nor can I execute
them otherwise, than as lying within the sphere of such a world as I
conceive. Even he who has never thought of his moral destination, if
any such there could be, or who, if he has thought about it at all,
has never entertained the slightest purpose of ever, in the indefinite
future, fulfilling it--even he derives his world of the senses and his
belief in the reality of such a world no otherwise than from his idea
of a moral world. If he does not comprehend it through the idea of his
duties, he certainly does so through the requisition of his rights.
What he does not require of himself he yet requires of others, in
relation to himself--that they treat him with care and consideration,
agreeably to his nature, not as an irrational thing, but as a free and
self-subsisting being. And so he is constrained, in order that they
may comply with this demand, to think of them also as rational, free,
self-subsisting, and independent of the mere force of Nature. And even
though he should never propose to himself any other aim in the use and
fruition of the objects which surround him than that of enjoying them,
he still demands this enjoyment as a right, of which others must leave
him in undisturbed possession. Accordingly, he comprehends even the
irrational world of the senses through a moral idea. No one who lives
a conscious life can renounce these claims to be respected as rational
and self-subsisting. And with these claims at least there is connected
in his soul a seriousness, an abandonment of doubt, a belief in
a reality, if not with the acknowledgment of a moral law in
his innermost being. Do but assail him who denies his own moral
destination and your existence and the existence of a corporeal
world, except in the way of experiment, to try what speculation can
do--assail him actively, carry his principles into life, and act as if
he either did not exist, or as if he were a piece of rude matter, and
he will soon forget the joke; he will become seriously angry with you,
he will seriously reprove you for treating him so, and maintain that
you ought not and must not do so to him; and, in this way, he will
practically admit that you really possess the power of acting upon
him, that he exists, that you exist, and that there exists _a medium
through which you act upon him_; and that you have at least duties
toward him.
Hence it is not the action of supposed objects without us, which exist
for us only and for which we exist only in so far as we already know
of them; just as little is it an empty fashioning, by means of our
imagination and our thinking, whose products would appear to us as
such, as empty pictures; it is not these, but the necessary faith in
our liberty and our power, in our veritable action and in definite
laws of human action, which serves as the foundation of all
consciousness of a reality without us, a consciousness which is
itself but a belief, since it rests on a belief, but one which follows
necessarily from that belief. We are compelled to assume that we
act in general, and that we ought to act in a certain way; we are
compelled to assume a certain sphere of such action--this sphere being
the truly and actually existing world as we find it. And _vice versa_,
this world is absolutely nothing but that sphere, and by no means
extends beyond it. The consciousness of the actual world proceeds from
the necessity of action, and not the reverse--i.e., the necessity of
action from the consciousness of such a world. The necessity is first
not the consciousness; that is derived. We do not act because we
agnize, but we agnize because we are destined to act. Practical reason
is the root of all reason. The laws of action for rational beings are
_immediately_ certain; their world is certain _only because they are
certain_. Were we to renounce the former, the world, and, with it,
ourselves, we should sink into absolute nothing. We raise ourselves
out of this nothing, and sustain ourselves above this nothing, solely
by means of our morality.
II
* * * * *
When I contemplate the world as it is, independently of any command,
there manifests itself in my interior the wish, the longing, no! not
a longing merely--the absolute demand for a better world. I cast a
glance at the relations of men to one another and to Nature, at the
weakness of their powers, at the strength of their appetites and
passions. It cries to me irresistibly from my innermost soul: "Thus it
cannot possibly be destined always to remain. It must, O it must all
become other and better!"
I can in no wise imagine to myself the present condition of man as
that which is designed to endure. I cannot imagine it to be his whole
and final destination. If so, then would everything be dream and
delusion, and it would not be worth the trouble to have lived and to
have taken part in this ever-recurring, aimless, and unmeaning game.
Only so far as I can regard this condition as the means of something
better, as a point of transition to a higher and more perfect, does
it acquire any value for me. Not on its own account, but on account of
something better for which it prepares the way, can I bear it, honor
it, and joyfully fulfil my part in it. My mind can find no place, nor
rest a moment, in the present; it is irresistibly repelled by it. My
whole life streams irrepressibly on toward the future and better.
Am I only to eat and to drink that I may hunger and thirst again,
and again eat and drink, until the grave, yawning beneath my feet,
swallows me up, and I myself spring up as food from the ground? Am I
to beget beings like myself, that they also may eat and drink and die,
and leave behind them beings like themselves, who shall do the same
that I have done? To what purpose this circle which perpetually
returns into itself; this game forever recommencing, after the same
manner, in which everything is born but to perish, and perishes but
to be born again as it was; this monster which forever devours itself
that it may produce itself again, and which produces itself that it
may again devour itself?
Never can this be the destination of my being and of all being. There
must be something which exists because it has been brought forth, and
which now remains and can never be brought forth again after it has
been brought forth once. And this, that is permanent, must beget
itself amid the mutations of the perishing, and continue amid those
mutations, and be borne along unhurt upon the waves of time.
As yet our race wrings with difficulty its sustenance and its
continuance from reluctant Nature. As yet the larger portion of
mankind are bowed down their whole life long by hard labor, to procure
sustenance for themselves and the few who think for them. Immortal
spirits are compelled to fix all their thinking and scheming, and
all their efforts, on the soil which bears them nourishment. It often
comes to pass as yet, that when the laborer has ended, and promises
himself, for his pains, the continuance of his own existence and of
those pains, then hostile elements destroy in a moment what he had
been slowly and carefully preparing for years, and delivers up the
industrious painstaking man, without any fault of his own, to
hunger and misery. It often comes to pass as yet, that inundations,
storm-winds, volcanoes, desolate whole countries, and mingle works
which bear the impress of a rational mind, as well as their authors,
with the wild chaos of death and destruction. Diseases still hurry men
into a premature grave, men in the bloom of their powers, and children
whose existence passes away without fruit or result. The pestilence
still stalks through blooming states, leaves the few who escape
it bereaved and alone, deprived of the accustomed aid of their
companions, and does all in its power to give back to the wilderness
the land which the industry of man had already conquered for its own.
So it is, but so it cannot surely have been intended always to remain.
No work which bears the impress of reason, and which was undertaken
for the purpose of extending the dominion of reason, can be utterly
lost in the progress of the times. The sacrifices which the irregular
violence of Nature draws from reason must at least weary, satisfy, and
reconcile that violence. The force which has caused injury by acting
without rule cannot be intended to do so in that way any longer, it
cannot be destined to renew itself; it must be used up, from this time
forth and forever, by that one outbreak. All those outbreaks of
rude force, before which human power vanishes into nothing--those
desolating hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, can be nothing else but
the final struggle of the wild mass against the lawfully progressive,
life-giving, systematic course to which it is compelled, contrary to
its own impulse. They can be nothing but the last concussive strokes
in the formation of our globe, now about to perfect itself. That
opposition must gradually become weaker and at last exhausted, since,
in the lawful course of things, there can be nothing that should renew
its power. That formation must at last be perfected, and our destined
abode complete. Nature must gradually come into a condition in which
we can count with certainty upon her equal step, and in which her
power shall keep unaltered a definite relation with that power which
is destined to govern it, that is, the human. So far as this relation
already exists and the systematic development of Nature has gained
firm footing, the workmanship of man, by its mere existence and its
effects, independent of any design on the part of the author, is
destined to react upon Nature and to represent in her a new and
life-giving principle. Cultivated lands are to quicken and mitigate
the sluggish, hostile atmosphere of the eternal forests, wildernesses,
and morasses. Well-ordered and diversified culture is to diffuse
through the air a new principle of life and fructification, and the
sun to send forth its most animating beams into that atmosphere which
is breathed by a healthy, industrious, and ingenious people. Science,
awakened, at first, by the pressure of necessity, shall hereafter
penetrate deliberately and calmly into the unchangeable laws of
Nature, overlook her whole power, and learn to calculate her possible
developments--shall form for itself a new Nature in idea, attach
itself closely to the living and active, and follow hard upon her
footsteps. And all knowledge which reason has wrung from Nature shall
be preserved in the course of the times and become the foundation
of further knowledge, for the common understanding of our race. Thus
shall Nature become ever more transparent and penetrable to
human perception, even to its innermost secrets. And human power,
enlightened and fortified with its inventions, shall rule her with
ease and peacefully maintain the conquest once effected. By degrees,
there shall be needed no greater outlay of mechanical labor than the
human body requires for its development, cultivation and health. And
this labor shall cease to be a burden; for the rational being is not
destined to be a bearer of burdens.
But it is not Nature, it is liberty itself, that occasions the most
numerous and the most fearful disorders among our kind. The direst
enemy of man is man.
* * * * *
It is the destination of our race to unite in one body, thoroughly
acquainted with itself in all its parts, and uniformly cultivated in
all. Nature, and even the passions and vices of mankind, have, from
the beginning, drifted toward this goal. A large part of the road
which leads to it is already put behind us, and we may count with
certainty that this goal, which is the condition of further, united
progress, will be reached in due season. Do not ask History whether
mankind, on the whole, have grown more purely moral! They have grown
to extended, comprehensive, forceful acts of arbitrary will; but it
was almost a necessity of their condition that they should direct that
will exclusively to evil.
Neither ask History whether the esthetic education and the
rationalistic culture of the understanding, of the fore-world,
concentrated upon a few single points, may not have far exceeded, in
degree, that of modern times. It might be that the answer would put
us to shame, and that the human race in growing older would appear, in
this regard, not to have advanced, but to have lost ground.
But ask History in what period the existing culture was most widely
diffused and distributed among the greatest number of individuals.
Undoubtedly it will be found that, from the beginning of history down
to our own day, the few light-points of culture have extended
their rays farther and farther from their centres, have seized one
individual after another, and one people after another; and that this
diffusion of culture is still going on before our eyes.
And this was the first goal of Humanity, on its infinite path. Until
this is attained, until the existing culture of an age is diffused
over the whole habitable globe, and our race is made capable of the
most unlimited communication with itself, one nation, one quarter of
the globe, must await the other, on their common path, and each must
bring its centuries of apparent standing still or retrogradation, as
a sacrifice to the common bond, for the sake of which, alone, they
themselves exist.
When this first goal shall be attained, when everything useful that
has been discovered at one end of the earth shall immediately be
made known and imparted to all, then Humanity, without interruption,
without cessation, and without retrocession, with united force, and
with one step shall raise itself up to a degree of culture which we
lack power to conceive.
* * * * *
By the institution of this one true State and the firm establishment
of internal peace, external war also, at least between true
States, will be rendered impossible. Even for the sake of its own
advantage--in order that no thought of injustice, plunder and violence
may spring up in its own subjects, and no possible opportunity be
afforded them for any gain, except by labor and industry, in the
sphere assigned by law--every State must forbid as strictly, must
hinder as carefully, must compensate as exactly, and punish as
severely, an injury done to the citizen of a neighbor-State, as if it
were inflicted upon a fellow-citizen. This law respecting the security
of its neighbors is necessary to every State which is not a community
of robbers. And herewith the possibility of every just complaint of
one State against another, and every case of legitimate defense, are
done away.
There are no necessarily and continuously direct relations between
States, as such, that could engender warfare. As a general rule, it
is only through the relations of single citizens of one State with the
citizens of another--it is only in the person of one of its members,
that a State can be injured. But this injury will be instantly
redressed, and the offended State satisfied.
* * * * *
That a whole nation should determine, for the sake of plunder, to
attack a neighboring country with war, is impossible, since in a State
in which all are equal the plunder would not become the booty of
a few, but must be divided equally among all, and, so divided, the
portion of each individual would never repay him for the trouble of a
war. Only, then, when the advantage to be gained falls to the lot of a
few oppressors, but the disadvantages, the trouble, the cost fall upon
a countless army of slaves--only then is a war of plunder possible or
conceivable. Accordingly, these States have no war to fear from States
like themselves, but only from savages or barbarians, tempted to prey
by want of skill to enrich themselves by industry; or from nations of
slaves, who are driven by their masters to procure plunder, of which
they are to enjoy no part themselves. As to the former, each single
State is undoubtedly superior to them in strength, by virtue of the
arts of culture. As to the latter, the common advantage of all the
States will lead them to strengthen themselves by union with one
another. No free State can reasonably tolerate, in its immediate
vicinity, polities whose rulers find their advantage in subjecting
neighboring nations, and which, therefore, by their mere existence,
perpetually threaten their neighbors' peace. Care for their own
security will oblige all free States to convert all around them into
free States like themselves, and thus, for the sake of their own
safety, to extend the dominion of culture to the savages, and that of
liberty to the slave nations round about them. And so, when once a few
free States have been formed, the empire of culture, of liberty, and,
with that, of universal peace, will gradually embrace the globe.
* * * * *
In this only true State, all temptation to evil in general, and even
the possibility of deliberately determining upon an evil act, will be
cut off, and man be persuaded as powerfully as he can be to direct his
will toward good. There is no man who loves evil because it is evil.
He loves in it only the advantages and enjoyments which it promises,
and which, in the present state of Humanity, it, for the most part,
actually affords. As long as this state continues, as long as a price
is set upon vice, a thorough reformation of mankind, in the whole, is
scarcely to be hoped for. But in such a civil Polity as should exist,
such as reason demands, and such as the thinker easily describes,
although as yet he nowhere finds it, and such as will necessarily
shape itself with the first nation that is truly disenthralled--in
such a Polity evil will offer no advantages, but, on the contrary, the
most certain disadvantages; and the aberration of self-love into acts
of injustice will be suppressed by self-love itself. According to
infallible regulations, in such a State, all taking advantage of
and oppressing others, every act of self-aggrandizement at another's
expense is not only sure to be in vain--labor lost--but it reacts upon
the author, and he himself inevitably incurs the evil which he would
inflict upon others. Within his own State and outside of it, on the
whole face of the earth, he finds no one whom he can injure with
impunity. It is not, however, to be expected that any one will resolve
upon evil merely for evil's sake, notwithstanding he cannot accomplish
it and nothing but his own injury can result from the attempt. The
use of liberty for evil ends is done away. Man must either resolve
to renounce his liberty entirely--to become, with patience, a passive
wheel in the great machine of the whole--or he must apply his liberty
to that which is good.
And thus, then, in a soil so prepared, the good will easily flourish.
When selfish aims no longer divide mankind, and their powers can no
longer be exercised in destroying one another in battle, nothing will
remain to them but to turn their united force against the common and
only adversary which yet remains--resisting, uncultivated Nature. No
longer separated by private ends, they will necessarily unite in one
common end, and there will grow up a body everywhere animated by one
spirit and one love. Every disadvantage of the individual, since it
can no longer be a benefit to any one, becomes an injury to the whole
and to each particular member of the same, and is felt in each member
with equal pain, and with equal activity redressed. Every advance
which one man makes, human nature, in its entirety, makes with him.
Here, where the petty, narrow self of the person is already
annihilated by the Polity, every one loves every other one as truly as
himself, as a component part of that great _Self_ which alone remains
for him to love, and of which he is nothing but a component part,
which only through the Whole can gain or lose. Here the conflict of
evil with good is done away, for no evil can any longer spring up.
The contest of the good among themselves, even concerning the good,
vanishes, now that it has become easy to them to love the good for its
own sake, and not for their sakes, as the authors of it--now that the
only interest they can have is that it come to pass, that truth
be discovered, that the good deed be executed--not by whom it is
accomplished. Here every one is always prepared to join his power to
that of his neighbor, and to subordinate it to that of his neighbor.
Whoever, in the judgment of all, shall accomplish the best, in the
best way, him all will support and partake with equal joy in his
success.
This is the aim of earthly existence which Reason sets before us, and
for the sure attainment of which Reason vouches. It is not a goal for
which we are to strive merely that our faculties may be exercised on
something great, but which we must relinquish all hope of realizing.
It shall and must be realized. At some time or other this goal must be
attained, as surely as there is a world of the senses, and a race of
reasonable beings in time, for whom no serious and rational object can
be imagined but this, and whose existence is made intelligible by this
alone. Unless the whole life of man is to be considered as the sport
of an evil Spirit, who implanted this ineradicable striving after
the imperishable in the breasts of poor wretches merely that he might
enjoy their ceaseless struggle after that which unceasingly flees
from them, their still repeated grasping after that which still
eludes their grasp, their restless driving about in an ever-returning
circle--and laugh at their earnestness in this senseless sport--unless
the wise man, who must soon see through this game and be tired of his
own part in it, is to throw away his life, and the moment of awakening
reason is to be the moment of earthly death--that goal must be
attained. O it is attainable in life and by means of life; for Reason
commands me to live. It is attainable, for I am.
III
But now, when it is attained, when Humanity shall stand at the
goal--what then? There is no higher condition on earth than that.
The generation which first attains it can do nothing further than to
persist in it, maintain it with all their powers, and die and leave
descendants who shall do the same that they have done, and who, in
their turn, shall leave descendants that shall do the same. Humanity
would then stand still in its course. Therefore its earthly goal
cannot be its highest goal, for this earthly goal is intelligible, and
attainable, and finite. Though we consider the preceding generations
as means of developing the last and perfected, still we cannot escape
the inquiry of earnest Reason: "Wherefore then these last?" Given a
human race on the earth, its existence must indeed be in accordance
with Reason, and not contrary to it. It must become all that it can
become on earth. But why should it exist at all--this human race? Why
might it not as well have remained in the womb of the Nothing? Reason
is not for the sake of existence, but existence for the sake of
Reason. An existence which does not, in itself, satisfy Reason and
solve all her questions, cannot possibly be the true one.
Then, too, are the actions commanded by the voice of Conscience, whose
dictates I must not speculate about, but obey in silence--are they
actually the means, and the only means, of accomplishing the earthly
aim of mankind? That I cannot refer them to any other object but this,
that I can have no other intent with them, is unquestionable. But is
this, my intent, fulfilled in every case? Is nothing more needed but
to will the best, in order that it may be accomplished? Alas! most of
our good purposes are, for this world, entirely lost, and some of
them seem even to have an entirely opposite effect to that which was
proposed. On the other hand, the most despicable passions of men,
their vices and their misdeeds, seem often to bring about the good
more surely than the labors of the just man, who never consents to do
evil that good may come. It would seem that the highest good of the
world grows and thrives quite independently of all human virtues or
vices, according to laws of its own, by some invisible and unknown
power, just as the heavenly bodies run through their appointed course,
independently of all human effort; and that this power absorbs into
its own higher plan all human designs, whether good or ill, and,
by its superior strength, appropriates what was intended for other
purposes to its own ends.
If, therefore, the attainment of that earthly goal could be the design
of our existence, and if no further question concerning it remained
to Reason, that aim, at least, would not be ours, but the aim of that
unknown Power. We know not at any moment what may promote it. Nothing
would be left us but to supply to that Power, by our actions, so much
material, no matter what, to work up in its own way, for its own ends.
Our highest wisdom would be, not to trouble ourselves about things
in which we have no concern, but to live, in each case, as the fancy
takes us, and quietly leave the consequences to that Power. The moral
law within us would be idle and superfluous, and wholly unsuited to a
being that had no higher capacity and no higher destination. In order
to be at one with ourselves, we should refuse obedience to the voice
of that law and suppress it as a perverse and mad enthusiasm.
* * * * *
If the whole design of our existence were to bring about a purely
earthly condition of our race, all that would be required would be
some infallible mechanism to direct our action; and we need be nothing
more than wheels well fitted to the whole machine. Freedom would then
not only be useless, but even contrary to the purpose of existence;
and good-will would be quite superfluous. The world, in that case,
would be very clumsily contrived--would proceed to its goal with waste
of power and by circuitous paths. Rather, mighty World-Spirit, hadst
thou taken from us this freedom, which, only with difficulty and by a
different arrangement, thou canst fit to thy plans, and compelled us
at once to act as those plans required! Thou wouldst then arrive at
thy goal by the shortest road, as the meanest of the inhabitants of
thy worlds can tell thee.
But I am free, and therefore such a concatenation of cause and effect,
in which freedom is absolutely superfluous and useless, cannot exhaust
my whole destination. I must be free; for not the mechanical act, but
the free determination of free-will, for the sake of the command
alone and absolutely for no other purpose (so says the inward voice of
conscience)--this alone determines our true worth. The band with which
the law binds me is a band for living spirits. It scorns to rule
over dead mechanism, and applies itself alone to the living and
self-acting. Such obedience it demands. This obedience cannot be
superfluous.
And, herewith, the eternal world rises more brightly before me, and
the fundamental law of its order stands clear before the eye of my
mind. In that world the _will_, purely and only, as it lies, locked up
from all eyes, in the secret dark of my soul, is the first link in a
chain of consequences which runs through the whole invisible world
of spirits; so in the earthly world the _deed_, a certain movement
of matter, becomes the first link in a material chain which extends
through the whole system of matter. The will is the working and living
principle in the world of Reason, as motion is the working and living
principle in the world of the senses. I stand in the centre of two
opposite worlds, a visible in which the deed, and an invisible,
altogether incomprehensible, in which the will, decides. I am one
of the original forces for both these worlds. My will is that which
embraces both. This will is in and of itself a constituent portion of
the supersensuous world. When I put it in motion by a resolution, I
move and change something in that world, and my activity flows on over
the whole and produces something new and ever-during which then exists
and needs not to be made anew. This will breaks forth into a material
act, and this act belongs to the world of the senses, and effects, in
that, what it can.
I have not to wait until after I am divorced from the connection
of the earthly world to gain admission into that which is above
the earth. I am and live in it already, far more truly than in the
earthly. Even now it is my only firm standing-ground, and the eternal
life, which I have long since taken possession of, is the only
reason why I am willing still to prolong the earthly. That which
they denominate Heaven lies not beyond the grave. It is already here,
diffused around our Nature, and its light arises in every pure heart.
My will is mine, and it is the only thing that is entirely mine and
depends entirely upon myself. By it I am already a citizen of the
kingdom of liberty and of self-active Reason. My conscience, the tie
by which that world holds me unceasingly and binds me to itself, tells
me at every moment what determination of my will (the only thing
by which, here in the dust, I can lay hold of that kingdom) is most
consonant with its order; and it depends entirely upon myself to give
myself the destination enjoined upon me. I cultivate myself then for
this world, and, accordingly, work in it and for it, while cultivating
one of its members. I pursue in it, and in it alone, without
vacillation or doubt, according to fixed rules, my aim--sure of
success, since there is no foreign power that opposes my intent.
* * * * *
That our good-will, in and for and through itself, must have
consequences, we know, even in this life; for Reason cannot require
anything without a purpose. But what these consequences are--nay, how
it is possible that a mere will can effect anything--is a question to
which we cannot even imagine a solution, so long as we are entangled
with this material world, and it is the part of wisdom not to
undertake an inquiry concerning which, we know beforehand, it must be
unsuccessful.
* * * * *
This then is my whole sublime destination, my true essence. I am a
member of two systems--a purely spiritual one, in which I rule by pure
will alone; and a sensuous one, in which I work by my deed.
* * * * *
These two systems, the purely spiritual and the sensuous--which last
may consist of an immeasurable series of particular lives--exist in
me from the moment in which my active reason is developed, and pursue
their parallel courses. The latter system is only an appearance, for
me and for those who share with me the same life. The former alone
gives to the latter meaning, and purpose, and value. I _am_ immortal,
imperishable, eternal, so soon as I form the resolution to obey the
law of Reason; and do not first have to _become_ so. The supersensuous
world is not a future world; it is present. It never can be more
present at any one point of finite existence than at any other point.
After an existence of myriad lives, it cannot be more present than at
this moment. Other conditions of my sensuous existence are to come;
but these are no more the true life than the present condition. By
means of that resolution I lay hold on eternity, and strip off this
life in the dust and all other sensuous lives that may await me, and
raise myself far above them. I become to myself the sole fountain
of all my being and of all my phenomena; and have henceforth,
unconditioned by aught without me, life in myself. My will, which
I myself, and no stranger, fit to the order of that world, is this
fountain of true life and of eternity.
But only my will is this fountain; and only when I acknowledge this
will to be the true seat of moral excellence, and actually elevate it
to this excellence, do I attain to the certainty and the possession of
that supersensuous world.
* * * * *
The sense by which we lay hold on eternal life we acquire only by
renouncing and offering up sense, and the aims of sense, to the law
which claims our will alone, and not our acts--by renouncing it with
the conviction that to do so is reasonable and alone reasonable. With
this renunciation of the earthly, the belief in the eternal first
enters our soul and stands isolated there, as the only stay by which
we can still sustain ourselves when we have relinquished everything
else, as the only animating principle that still uplifts our hearts
and still inspires our life. Well was it said, in the metaphors of
a sacred doctrine, that man must first die to the world and be born
again, in order to enter into the kingdom of God.
I see, oh, I see now, clear before mine eyes, the cause of my former
heedlessness and blindness concerning spiritual things! Filled with
earthly aims, and lost in them with all my scheming and striving; put
in motion and impelled only by the idea of a result, which is to be
actualized without us, by the desire of such a result and pleasure in
it--insensible and dead to the pure impulse of that Reason which gives
the law to itself, which sets before us a purely spiritual aim, the
immortal Psyche remains chained to the earth; her wings are bound. Our
philosophy becomes the history of our own heart and life. As we find
ourselves, so we imagine man in general and his destination. Never
impelled by any other motive than the desire of that which can be
realized in this world, there is no true liberty for us, no liberty
which has the reason for its destination absolutely and entirely in
itself. Our liberty, at the utmost, is that of the self-forming
plant, no higher in its essence, only more curious in its result, not
producing a form of matter with roots, leaves and blossoms, but a form
of mind with impulses, thoughts, actions. Of the true liberty we
are positively unable to comprehend anything, because we are not in
possession of it. Whenever we hear it spoken of, we draw the words
down to our own meaning, or briefly dismiss it with a sneer, as
nonsense. With the knowledge of liberty, the sense of another world
is also lost to us. Everything of this sort floats by like words which
are not addressed to us; like an ash-gray shadow without color or
meaning, which we cannot by any end take hold of and retain. Without
the least interest, we let everything go as it is stated. Or if ever
a robuster zeal impels us to consider it seriously, we see clearly and
can demonstrate that all those ideas are untenable, hollow visions,
which a man of sense casts from him. And, according to the premises
from which we set out and which are taken from our own innermost
experience, we are quite right, and are alike unanswerable and
unteachable, so long as we remain what we are. The excellent doctrines
which are current among the people, fortified with special authority,
concerning freedom, duty and eternal life, change themselves for us
into grotesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the Elysian fields,
although we do not disclose the true opinion of our hearts, because we
think it more advisable to keep the people in outward decency by means
of these images. Or if we are less reflective, and ourselves fettered
by the bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to the true
plebeian level, by believing that which, so understood, would be
foolish fable; and by finding, in those purely spiritual indications,
nothing but the promise of a continuance, to all eternity, of the same
miserable existence which we lead here below.
To say all in a word: Only through a radical reformation of my will
does a new light arise upon my being and destination. Without this,
however much I may reflect, and however distinguished my mental
endowments, there is nothing but darkness in me and around me. The
reformation of the heart alone conducts to true wisdom. So then, let
my whole life be directed unrestrainedly toward this one end!
IV
My lawful will, simply as such, in and through itself, must
have consequences, certain and without exception. Every dutiful
determination of my will, although no act should flow from it, must
operate in another, to me incomprehensible, world; and, except this
dutiful determination of the will, nothing can take effect in that
world. What do I suppose when I suppose this? What do I take for
granted?
Evidently, a law, a rule absolutely and without exception valid,
according to which the dutiful will must have consequences. Just as in
the earthly world which environs me, I assume a law according to which
this ball, when impelled by my hand with this given force, in this
given direction, must necessarily move in such a direction, with a
determinate measure of rapidity, perhaps impel another ball with
this given degree of force by which the other ball moves on with a
determinate rapidity; and so on indefinitely. As in this case, with
the mere direction and movement of my hand, I know and comprehend all
the directions and movements which shall follow it, as certainly as if
they were already present and perceived by me; even so I comprise, in
my dutiful will, a series of necessary and infallible consequences
in the spiritual world, as if they were already present, only that I
cannot, as in the material world, determine them--i.e., I merely know
that they shall be, not how they shall be. I suppose a law of the
spiritual world, in which my mere will is one of the moving forces,
just as my hand is one of the moving forces in the material world.
That firmness of my confidence and the thought of this law of a
spiritual world are one and the same thing--not two thoughts of which
one is the consequence of the other, but precisely the same thought,
just as the certainty with which I count upon a certain motion, and
the thought of a mechanical law of Nature, are the same. The idea
of _Law_ expresses generally nothing else but the fixed, immovable
reliance of Reason on a proposition, and the impossibility of
supposing the contrary.
I assume such a law of a spiritual world, which my own will did not
enact, nor the will of any finite being, nor the will of all finite
beings together, but to which my will and the will of all finite
beings is subject.
* * * * *
Agreeably to what has now been advanced, the law of the supersensuous
world should be a _Will_.
A Will which acts purely and simply as will, by its own agency,
entirely without any instrument or sensuous medium of its efficacy;
which is absolutely, in itself, at once action and result; which
wills and it is done, which commands and it stands fast; in
which, accordingly, the demand of Reason to be absolutely free and
self-active is represented. A Will which is law in itself; which
determines itself, not according to humor and caprice, not after
previous deliberation, vacillation and doubt, but which is forever and
unchangeably determined, and upon which one may reckon with infallible
security, as the mortal reckons securely on the laws of his world.
A Will in which the lawful will of finite beings has inevitable
consequences, but only their will, which is immovable to everything
else, and for which everything else is as though it were not.
That sublime Will, therefore, does not pursue its course for itself,
apart from the rest of Reason's world. There is between it and all
finite, rational beings, a spiritual tie, and that Will itself is
this spiritual tie of Reason's world. I will, purely and decidedly, my
duty, and it then wills that I shall succeed, at least in the world of
spirits. Every lawful resolve of the finite will enters into it,
and moves and determines it--to speak after our fashion--not in
consequence of a momentary good pleasure, but in consequence of the
eternal law of its being.
With astounding clearness it now stands before my soul, the thought
which hitherto had been wrapped in darkness--the thought that my will,
merely as such, and of itself, has consequences. It has consequences
because it is infallibly and immediately taken knowledge of by another
related Will, which is itself an act and the only life-principle of
the spiritual world. In that Will it has its first consequence, and
only through that, in the rest of the spiritual world which, in all
its parts, is but the product of that infinite Will.
Thus I flow--the mortal must use the language of mortals--thus I flow
in upon that Will; and the voice of conscience in my inmost being,
which, in every situation of my life, instructs me what I have to do
in that situation, is that by means of which it, in turn, flows
in upon me. That voice is the oracle from the eternal world, made
sensible by my environment, and translated, by my reception of it,
into my language; which announces to me how I must fit myself to my
part in the order of the spiritual world, or to the infinite Will,
which itself is the order of that spiritual world. I cannot oversee or
see through this spiritual order; nor need I. I am only a link in its
chain, and can no more judge of the whole than a single tone in a song
can judge of the harmony of the whole. But what I myself should be, in
the harmony of Spirits, I must know; for only I myself can make myself
that, and it is immediately revealed to me by a voice which sounds
over to me from that world. Thus I stand in connection with the only
being that _exists_, and partake of its being. There is nothing truly
real, permanent, imperishable in me, but these two--the voice of my
conscience and my free obedience. By means of the first, the spiritual
world bows down to me and embraces me, as one of its members. By means
of the second, I raise myself into this world, lay hold of it, and
work in it. But that infinite Will is the mediator between it and me;
for, of it and me, that Will is the primal fountain. This is the only
true and imperishable reality, toward which my soul moves from its
inmost depth. All else is only phenomenon, and vanishes and returns
again, with new seeming.
This Will connects me with itself. The same connects me with all
finite beings of my species, and is the universal mediator between
us all. That is the great mystery of the invisible world, and
its fundamental law, so far as it is a world or system of several
individual wills: _Union and direct reciprocal action of several
self-subsisting and independent wills among one another_--a mystery
which, even in the present life, lies clear before all eyes, without
any one's noticing it or thinking it worthy his admiration! The voice
of Conscience, which enjoins upon each one his proper duty, is the ray
by which we proceed from the Infinite and are set forth as individual
particular beings. It defines the boundaries of our personality; it
is, therefore, our true original constituent, the foundation and the
stuff of all the life which we live.
* * * * *
That eternal Will, then, is indeed world-creator, as he alone can
be--in the finite reason (the only creation which is needed). They who
suppose him to build a world out of eternal inert matter, which world,
in that case, could be nothing else but inert and lifeless, like
implements fashioned by human hands and not an eternal process of
self-development, or who think they can imagine the going forth of a
material something out of nothing, know neither the world nor him. If
matter only is something, then there is nowhere anything, and nowhere,
in all eternity, can anything be. Only Reason _is_: the infinite
reason in itself, and the finite in and through the infinite. Only in
our minds does he create the world, or, at least, that from which we
unfold it, and that whereby we unfold it--the call to duty, and the
feelings, perceptions and laws of thought agreeing therewith. It is
_his_ light whereby we see light and all that appears to us in that
light. In our minds he is continually fashioning this world, and
interposing in it by interposing in our minds with the call of duty,
whenever another free agent effects a change therein. In our minds he
maintains this world, and, therewith, our finite existence, of which
alone we are capable, in that he causes to arise out of our states new
states continually. After he has proved us sufficiently for our next
destination, according to his higher aim, and when we shall have
cultivated ourselves for the same, he will annihilate this world for
us by what we call death, and introduce us into a new one, the product
of our dutiful action in this. All our life is his life. We are in
his hand, and remain in it, and no one can pluck us out of it. We are
eternal because he is eternal.
Sublime, living Will, whom no name can name, and whom no conception
can grasp!--well may I raise my mind to thee, for thou and I are not
divided. Thy voice sounds in me, and mine sounds back in thee; and all
my thoughts, if only they are true and good, are thought in thee. In
thee, the Incomprehensible, I become comprehensible to myself, and
entirely comprehend the world. All the riddles of my existence are
solved, and the most perfect harmony arises in my mind.
Thou art best apprehended by childlike simplicity, devoted to thee.
To it thou art the heart-searcher who lookest through its innermost
thoughts; the all-present, faithful witness of its sentiments, who
alone knowest that it meaneth well, and who alone understandest it,
when misunderstood by all the world. Thou art to it a Father, whose
purposes toward it are ever kind, and who will order everything for
its best good. It submitteth itself wholly, with body and soul, to thy
beneficent decrees. Do with me as thou wilt, it saith, I know that it
shall be good, so surely as it is thou that dost it. The speculative
understanding, which has only heard of thee but has never seen thee,
would teach us to know thy being in itself, and sets before us an
inconsistent monster which it gives out for thine image, ridiculous to
the merely knowing, hateful and detestable to the wise and good.
I veil my face before thee and lay my hand upon my mouth. How thou art
in thyself, and how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know,
as surely as I can never be thou. After thousand times thousand
spirit-lives lived through, I shall no more be able to comprehend thee
than now, in this hut of earth. That which I comprehend becomes, by my
comprehension of it, finite; and this can never, by an endless process
of magnifying and exalting, be changed into infinite. Thou differest
from the finite, not only in degree but in kind. By that magnifying
process they make thee only a greater and still greater man, but never
God, the Infinite, incapable of measure.
* * * * *
I will not attempt that which is denied to me by my finite nature,
and which could avail me nothing. I desire not to know how thou art
in thyself. But thy relations and connections with me, the finite,
and with all finite beings, lie open to mine eye, when I become what
I should be. They encompass me with a more luminous clearness than the
consciousness of my own being. Thou workest in me the knowledge of my
duty, of my destination in the series of rational beings. How? I know
not, and need not to know. Thou knowest and perceivest what I think
and will. How thou canst know it--by what act thou bringest this
consciousness to pass--on that point I comprehend nothing. Yea, I know
very well that the idea of an act, of a special act of consciousness,
applies only to me but not to thee, the Infinite. Thou willest,
because thou willest, that my free obedience shall have consequences
in all eternity. The act of thy will I cannot comprehend; I only know
that it is not like to mine. Thou _doest_, and thy will itself is
deed. But thy method of action is directly contrary to that of which,
alone, I can form a conception. Thou _livest_ and _art_, for thou
knowest, and willest, and workest, omnipresent to finite Reason. But
thou art not such as through all eternity I shall alone be able to
conceive of Being.
In the contemplation of these thy relations to me, the finite, I will
be calm and blessed. I know immediately, only what I must do. This
will I perform undisturbed and joyful, and without philosophizing.
For it is thy voice which commands me, it is the ordination of the
spiritual world-plan concerning me, and the power by which I perform
it is thy power. Whatsoever is commanded me by that voice, whatsoever
is accomplished by this power, is surely and truly good in relation to
that plan. I am calm in all the events of this world, for they occur
in thy world. Nothing can deceive, or surprise, or make me afraid, so
surely as thou livest and I behold thy life. For in thee and through
thee, O infinite One, I behold even my present world in another light!
Nature and natural consequences in the destinies and actions of free
beings, in view of thee, are empty, unmeaning words. There is no
Nature more. Thou, thou alone, art.
It no longer appears to me the aim of the present world that the
above-mentioned state of universal peace among men, and of their
unconditioned empire over the mechanism of Nature, should be brought
about merely that it may exist, but that it should be brought about
by man himself, and, since it is calculated for all, then it should be
brought about by all, as one great, free, moral community. Nothing
new and better for the individual, except through his dutiful will,
nothing new and better for the community, except through their united,
dutiful will, is the fundamental law of the great moral kingdom of
which the present life is a part.
The reason why the good-will of the individual is so often lost for
this world, is that it is only the will of the individual, and that
the will of the majority does not coincide with it; therefore it has
no consequences but those which belong to a future world. Hence, even
the passions and vices of men appear to coöperate in the promotion of
a better state, _not in and for themselves_--in this sense good can
never come out of evil--but by furnishing a counter-poise to opposite
vices, and finally annihilating those vices and themselves by their
preponderance. Oppression could never have gained the upper hand
unless cowardice, and baseness, and mutual distrust had prepared the
way for it. It will continue to increase until it eradicates cowardice
and the slavish mind; and despair re-awakens the courage that was
lost. Then the two antagonistic vices will have destroyed each other,
and the noblest in all human relations, permanent freedom, will have
come forth from them.
The actions of free beings have, strictly speaking, no other
consequences than those which affect other free beings. For only in
such, and for such, does a world exist; and that, wherein all agree,
is the world. But they have consequences in free agents only by
means of the infinite Will, by which all individuals exist. A call, a
revelation of that Will to us, is always a requirement to perform some
particular duty. Hence, even that which we call evil in the world, the
consequence of the abuse of freedom, exists only through _him_; and it
exists for all, for whom it exists, only so far as it imposes duties
upon them. Did it not fall within the eternal plan of our moral
education and the education of our whole race that precisely these
duties should be laid upon us, they would not have been imposed; and
that whereby they are imposed, and which we call evil, would never
have been. In this view, everything which takes place is good, and
absolutely accordant with the best ends. There is but one world
possible--a thoroughly good one. Everything that occurs in this world
conduces to the reformation and education of man, and, by means of
that, to the furtherance of his earthly destination.
It is this higher world-plan that we call Nature, when we say Nature
leads men through want to industry, through the evils of general
disorder to a righteous polity, through the miseries of their
perpetual wars to final, ever-during peace. Thy will, O Infinite, thy
providence alone, is this higher Nature! This too is best understood
by artless simplicity, which regards this life as a place of
discipline and education, as a school for eternity; which, in all
the fortunes it experiences, the most trivial as well as the most
momentous, beholds thy ordinations designed for good; and which firmly
believes that all things will work together for good to those who love
their duty and know thee.
O truly have I spent the former days of my life in darkness! Truly
have I heaped errors upon errors, and thought myself wise! Now only
out of thy mouth, wondrous Spirit, I fully understand the doctrine
which seemed so strange to me![3] although my understanding had
nothing to oppose to it. For now only I overlook it, in its whole
extent, in its deepest meaning, and in all its consequences.
Man is not a product of the world of the senses; and the end of his
existence can never be attained in that world. His destination lies
beyond time and space and all that pertains to the senses. He must
know what he is and what he is to make himself. As his destination
is sublime, so his thought must be able to lift itself above all the
bounds of the senses. This must be his calling. Where his being is
indigenous, there his thought must be indigenous also; and the most
truly human view, that which alone befits him, that in which his whole
power of thought is represented, is the view by which he lifts himself
above those limits, by which all that is of the senses is changed for
him into pure nothing, a mere reflection in mortal eyes of the alone
enduring, non-sensuous.
Many have been elevated to this view without scientific thought,
simply by their great heart and their pure moral instinct; because
they lived especially with the heart, and in the sentiments. They
denied, by their conduct, the efficacy and reality of the world of
the senses; and in the shaping of their purposes and measures, they
esteemed as nothing that concerning which they had not yet learned by
thinking that it is nothing, even to thought. They who could say, "our
citizenship is in heaven; we have here no permanent place, but seek
one to come;" they whose first principle was, to die to the world and
to be born anew, and, even here, to enter into another life--they,
truly, placed not the slightest value upon all the objects of sense,
and were, to use the language of the School, practical transcendental
Idealists.
Others who, in addition to the sensuous activity which is native to
us all, have, by their thought, confirmed themselves in the sensuous,
become implicated, and, as it were, grown together with it; they can
raise themselves permanently and perfectly above the sensuous only by
continuing and carrying out their thought. Otherwise, with the
purest moral intentions, they will still be drawn down again by their
understanding, and their whole being will remain a continued and
insoluble contradiction. For such, that philosophy, which I now first
entirely understand, is the power by which Psyche first strips off her
chrysalis, unfolds the wings on which she then hovers above herself,
and casts one glance on the slough she has dropped, thenceforth to
live and work in higher spheres.
Blessed be the hour in which I resolved to meditate on myself and my
destination! All my questions are solved. I know what I can know,
and I am without anxiety concerning that which I cannot know. I am
satisfied. There is perfect harmony and clearness in my spirit, and a
new and more glorious existence for that spirit begins.
My whole, complete destination, I do not comprehend. What I am
called to be and shall be, surpasses all my thought. A part of this
destination is yet hidden to me, visible only to him, the Father of
Spirits, to whom it is committed. I know only that it is secured to
me, and that it is eternal and glorious as himself. But that portion
of it which is committed to me, I know. I know it entirely, and it
is the root of all my other knowledge. I know, in every moment of my
life, with certainty, what I am to do in that moment. And this is my
whole destination, so far as it depends upon me. From this, since my
knowledge goes no farther, I must not depart. I must not desire to
know anything beyond it. I must stand fast in this one centre, and
take root in it. All my scheming and striving, and all my faculty,
must be directed to that. My whole existence must inweave itself with
it.
* * * * *
I raise myself to this viewpoint, and am a new creature. My whole
relation to the existing world is changed. The threads by which my
mind was heretofore bound to this world, and by whose mysterious
traction it followed all the movements of this world, are forever
severed, and I stand free--myself, my own world, peaceful and unmoved.
No longer with the heart, with the eye alone, I seize the objects
about me, and, through the eye alone, am connected with them. And this
eye itself, made clearer by freedom, looks through error and deformity
to the true and the beautiful; as, on the unmoved surface of the
water, forms mirror themselves pure and with a softened light.
My mind is forever closed against embarrassment and confusion, against
doubt and anxiety; my heart is forever closed against sorrow, and
remorse, and desire. There is but one thing that I care to know: What
I must do; and this I know, infallibly, always. Concerning all besides
I know nothing, and I know that I know nothing; and I root myself fast
in this my ignorance, and forbear to conjecture, to opine, to quarrel
with myself concerning that of which I know nothing. No event in this
world can move me to joy, and none to sorrow. Cold and unmoved I look
down upon them all; for I know that I cannot interpret one of them,
nor discern its connection with that which is my only concern.
Everything which takes place belongs to the plan of the eternal world,
and is good in relation to that plan; so much I know. But what, in
that plan, is pure gain, and what is only meant to remove existing
evil, accordingly what I should most or least rejoice in, I know not.
In his world everything succeeds. This suffices me, and in this faith
I stand firm as a rock. But what in his world is only germ, what
blossom, what the fruit itself, I know not. The only thing which can
interest me is the progress of reason and morality in the kingdom of
rational beings--and that purely for its own sake, for the sake of the
progress. Whether _I_ am the instrument of this progress or another,
whether it is my act which succeeds or is thwarted, or whether it is
the act of another, is altogether indifferent to me. I regard myself
in every case but as one of the instruments of a rational design, and
I honor and love myself, and am interested in myself, only as such;
and I wish the success of my act only so far as it goes to accomplish
that end. Therefore I regard all the events of this world in the same
manner and only with exclusive reference to this one end--whether
they proceed from me or from another, whether they relate to me
immediately, or to others. My breast is closed against all vexation
on account of personal mortifications and affronts, against all
exaltation on account of personal merits; for my entire personality
has long since vanished and been swallowed up in the contemplation of
the end.
* * * * *
Bodily sufferings, pain and sickness, should such befal me, I cannot
avoid to feel, for they are events of my nature, and I am and remain
nature here below. But they shall not trouble me. They affect only the
Nature with which I am, in some strange way, connected; not myself,
the being which is elevated above all Nature. The sure end of all
pain, and of all susceptibility of pain, is death; and of all which
the natural man is accustomed to regard as evil, this is the least so
to me. Indeed, I shall not die for myself, but only for others, for
those that remain behind, from whose connection I am severed. For
myself, the hour of death is the hour of birth to a new and more
glorious life.
Since my heart is thus closed to all desire for the earthly, since,
in fact, I have no longer any heart for the perishable, the universe
appears to my eye in a transfigured form. The dead inert mass which
but choked up space has vanished; and, instead thereof, flows, and
waves, and rushes the eternal stream of life, and power, and deed--of
the original life, of thy life, O Infinite! For all life is thy life,
and only the religious eye pierces to the kingdom of veritable beauty.
I am related to thee, and all that I behold around me is related
to me. All is quick, all is soul, and gazes upon me with bright
spirit-eyes, and speaks in spirit-tones to my heart. Most diversely
sundered and severed, I behold, in all the forms without me, myself
again, and beam upon myself from them, as the morning sun, in thousand
dew-drops diversely refracted, glitters back toward itself.
Thy life, as the finite being can apprehend it, is volition which
shapes and represents itself by means of itself alone. This life, made
sensible in various ways to mortal eyes, flows through me and from me
downward, through the immeasurable whole of Nature. Here it streams,
as self-creating, self-fashioning matter, through my veins and
muscles, and deposits its fulness outside of me, in the tree, in
the plant, in the grass. As one connected stream, drop by drop, the
forming life flows in all shapes and on all sides, wherever my eye can
follow it, and looks upon me, from every point of the universe, with
a different aspect, as the same force which fashions my own body in
darkness and in secret. Yonder it waves free, and leaps and dances as
self-forming motion in the brute; and, in every new body, represents
itself as another separate, self-subsisting world--the same power
which, invisible to me, stirs and moves in my own members. All that
lives follows this universal current, this one principle of all
movement, which transmits the harmonious concussion from one end of
the universe to the other. The brute follows it without freedom.
I, from whom, in the visible world, the movement proceeds (without,
therefore, originating in me), follow it freely.
But, pure and holy, and near to thine own essence as aught, to mortal
apprehension, can be, this thy life flows forth as a band which binds
spirits with spirits in one, as air and ether of the one world of
Reason, inconceivable and incomprehensible, and yet lying plainly
revealed to the spiritual eye. Conducted by this light-stream, thought
floats unrestrained and the same from soul to soul, and returns purer
and transfigured from the kindred breast. Through this mystery the
individual finds, and understands, and loves himself, only in another;
and every spirit detaches itself only from other spirits; and there
is no man, but only a Humanity; no isolated thinking, and loving, and
hating, but only a thinking, and loving, and hating in and through
one another. Through this mystery the affinity of spirits, in the
invisible world, streams forth into their corporeal nature, and
represents itself in two sexes, which, though every spiritual band
could be severed, are still constrained, as natural beings, to love
each other. It flows forth into the affection of parents and children,
of brothers and sisters, as if the souls were sprung from one blood as
well as the bodies--as if the minds were branches and blossoms of the
same stem; and from thence it embraces, in narrower or wider circles,
the whole sentient world. Even the hatred of spirits is grounded in
thirst for love; and no enmity springs up, except from friendship
denied.
Mine eye discerns this eternal life and motion, in all the veins of
sensuous and spiritual Nature, through what seems to others a dead
mass. And it sees this life forever ascend, and grow, and transfigure
itself into a more spiritual expression of its own nature. The
universe is no longer, to me, that circle which returns into itself,
that game which repeats itself without ceasing, that monster which
devours itself in order to reproduce itself as it was before. It is
spiritualized to my contemplation, and bears the peculiar impress of
the spirit--continual progress toward perfection, in a straight line
which stretches into infinity.
The sun rises and sets, the stars vanish and return again, and all the
spheres hold their cycle-dance. But they never return precisely such
as they disappeared; and in the shining fountains of life there is
also life and progress. Every hour which they bring, every morning and
every evening, sinks down with new blessings on the world. New life
and new love drop from the spheres, as dew-drops from the cloud, and
embrace Nature, as the cool night embraces the earth.
All death in Nature is birth; and precisely in dying the sublimation
of life appears most conspicuous. There is no death-bringing principle
in Nature, for Nature is only life, throughout. Not death kills, but
the more living life, which, hidden behind the old, begins and unfolds
itself. Death and birth are only the struggle of life with itself to
manifest itself in ever more transfigured form, more like itself.
And _my_ death--can that be anything different from this?--I, who am
not a mere representation and copy of life, but who bear within myself
the original, the alone true and essential life! It is not a possible
thought that Nature should annihilate a life which did not spring from
her--Nature, which exists only for my sake, not I for hers.
But even my natural life, even this mere representation of an inward
invisible life to mortal eyes, Nature cannot annihilate; otherwise she
must be able to annihilate herself--she who exists only for me and for
my sake, and who ceases to exist, if I am not. Even because she puts
me to death she must quicken me anew. It can be only my higher life,
unfolding itself in her, before which my present life disappears; and
that which mortals call death is the visible appearing of a second
vivification. Did no rational being, who has once beheld its light,
perish from the earth, there would be no reason to expect a new heaven
and a new earth. The only possible aim of Nature, that of representing
and maintaining Reason, would have been already fulfilled here below,
and her circle would be complete. But the act by which she puts to
death a free, self-subsisting being, is her solemn--to all Reason
apparent--transcending of that act, and of the entire sphere which she
thereby closes. The apparition of death is the conductor by which my
spiritual eye passes over to the new life of myself, and of a Nature
for me.
Every one of my kind who passes from earthly connections, and who
cannot, to my spirit, seem annihilated, because he is one of my kind,
draws my thought over with him. He still is, and to him belongs a
place.
While we, here below, sorrow for him with such sorrow as would be
felt, if possible, in the dull kingdom of unconsciousness, when a
human being withdraws himself from thence to the light of earth's
sun--while we so mourn, on yonder side there is joy because a man is
born into their world; as we citizens of earth receive with joy our
own. When I, some time, shall follow them, there will be for me only
joy; for sorrow remains behind, in the sphere which I quit.
It vanishes and sinks before my gaze--the world which I so lately
admired. With all the fulness of life, of order, of increase, which
I behold in it, it is but the curtain by which an infinitely more
perfect world is concealed from me. It is but the germ out of which
that infinitely more perfect shall unfold itself. My faith enters
behind this curtain, and warms and quickens this germ. It sees nothing
definite, but expects more than it can grasp here below, than it will
ever be able to grasp in time.
So I live and so I am; and so I am unchangeable, firm and complete
for all eternity. For this being is not one which I have received from
without; it is my own only true being and essence.
ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION
(1807 to 1808)
TRANSLATED BY LOUIS H. GRAY, PH.D.
ADDRESS EIGHT
The Definition of a Nation in the Higher Sense of the Word, and of
Patriotism
The last four addresses have answered the question, What is the German
as contrasted with other nations of Teutonic origin? The argument will
be complete if we further add the examination of the question, What is
a nation? The latter question is identical with another, and, at the
same time, the other question, which has often been propounded and
has been answered in very different ways, helps in the solution. This
question is, What is patriotism, or, as it would be more correctly
expressed, What is the love of the individual for his nation?
If we have thus far proceeded aright in the course of our
investigation, it must become obvious therefrom that only the
German--the primitive man, not he who has become petrified by
arbitrary laws and institutions--really has a nation and is entitled
to count on one, and that only he is capable of real and rational love
for his nation.
We smooth our way to a solution of our proposed task by means of the
following remark, which appears, at first sight, to lie outside the
context of our previous discussion.
As we have already observed in our third address, religion is able
absolutely to transport us above all time and above the whole of
present and perceptual life without doing the least injury to the
justice, morality, and holiness of the life influenced by this belief.
Even with the certain conviction that all our activity on this earth
will not leave the least trace behind it and will not produce the
slightest results, and even with the belief that the divine may
actually be perverse and may be used as a tool of evil and of still
deeper moral corruption, it is, nevertheless, possible to continue
in this activity simply in order to maintain the divine life that
has come forth within us and that stands in relation to a higher
governance of things in a future world where nothing perishes that
has been done in God. Thus, for instance, the apostles and the first
Christians generally, even while living, were wholly transported
above the earth because of their belief in heaven; and affairs
terrestrial--state, fatherland, and nation--were so entirely renounced
that they no longer deemed such trivial concerns worthy even of their
consideration. However possible this may be, however easy, moreover,
for faith, and however joyfully we may resign ourselves to the
conviction, since it is unalterably the will of God, that we have
no more an earthly country but are exiles and slaves here
below--nevertheless, this is not the natural condition and the rule
governing the course of the world, but is a rare exception. Moreover,
it is a very perverse use of religion (and, among others, Christianity
has frequently been guilty of it) when, as a question of principle and
without regard to the existent circumstances, it proceeds to commend
this withdrawal from the affairs of the state and of the nation as a
truly religious sentiment. Under such conditions, if they are true and
real and not perhaps induced merely by religious fanaticism, temporal
life loses all its independence and becomes simply a fore-court of
the true life and a hard trial to be borne only by obedience and
submission to the will of God; in this view it becomes true that,
as has been claimed by many, immortal souls have been plunged into
earthly bodies, as into prisons, simply as a punishment. In the
regular order of things, however, earthly life should itself truly be
life in which we may rejoice and which we may thankfully enjoy, even
though in expectation of a higher life; and although it is true that
religion is also the comfort of the slave illegally oppressed, yet,
above all things, the essence of religion is to oppose slavery and to
prevent, so far as possible, its deterioration to a mere consolation
of the captive. It is doubtless to the interest of the tyrant to
preach religious resignation and to refer to heaven those to whom he
will not grant a tiny place on earth; we must, however, be less hasty
to adopt the view of religion recommended by the tyrant, for, if
we can, we must forestall the making of earth into hell in order to
arouse a still greater longing for heaven.
The natural impulse of man, to be surrendered only in case of real
necessity, is to find heaven already on this earth and to amalgamate
into his earthly work day by day that which lasts forever; to plant
and to cultivate the imperishable in the temporal itself--not merely
in an unconceivable way, connected with the eternal solely by the gulf
which mortal eyes may not pass, but in a manner which is visible to
the mortal eye itself.
That I may begin with this generally intelligible example--what
noble-minded man does not wish and aspire to repeat his own life in
better wise in his children and, again, in their children, and still
to continue to live upon this earth, ennobled and perfected in their
lives, long after he is dead; to wrest from mortality the spirit,
the mind, and the character with which in his day he perchance put
perversity and corruption to flight, established uprightness, aroused
sluggishness, and uplifted dejection, and to deposit these, as his
best legacy to posterity, in the spirits of his survivors, in order
that, in their turn, they may again bequeath them equally adorned and
augmented? What noble-minded man does not wish, by act or thought,
to sow a seed for the infinite and eternal perfecting of his race;
to cast into Time something new and hitherto non-existent, which
may abide there and become the unfailing source of new creations;
to repay, for his place on this earth and for the short span of
life vouchsafed him, something that shall last forever even here on
earth--to the end that he as an individual, even though unnamed by
history (since thirst for fame is contemptible vanity), may leave
behind in his own consciousness and in his own belief manifest tokens
that he himself existed? What noble-minded man does not wish this,
I asked; yet the world is to be considered as organized only in
accordance with the requirements of those who thus view themselves as
the norm of how all men should be. It is for their sakes alone that
the world exists! They are indeed its kernel; and those who think
otherwise must be regarded as merely a part of the transitory world so
long as they reason on so low a plane, for they exist merely for the
sake of the noble-minded and must accommodate themselves to the latter
until they have risen to their height.
What, now, could it be that might give solid foundation to this
challenge and to this belief of the noble in the eternity and the
imperishability of his work? Obviously, only an order of things which
he could recognize as eternal in itself and as capable of receiving
eternal elements within itself. Such an order is, however, the
special, spiritual nature of human surroundings, which can, it is
true, be comprised in no concept, but which is, nevertheless, truly
present--the surroundings from which he has himself come forth with
all his thought and activity and with his faith in their eternity--the
nation from which he is descended, amid which he was educated and grew
up to what he now is. For however undoubtedly true it may be that his
work, if he rightly lays claim to its eternity, is in no wise the mere
result of the spiritual, natural law of his nation, simply merging
into this result--no, it must be thought of as an element greater
than that--a something which flows immediately from the primitive
and divine life. Nevertheless, it is equally true that this something
more, immediately after its formation as a visible phenomenon, has
subordinated itself to that special spiritual law of nature, has
acquired a perceptual expression only in accordance with that law.
Under this same natural law, so long as this nation endures, all
further revelations of the divine will also appear and be formed
within it. Yet, through the fact that the man existed and so labored,
this law itself is further determined, and his activity has become
a permanent component of it; everything subsequent will likewise be
compelled to adapt itself accordingly and to conform to the law in
question. And thus he is made certain that the culture which he has
achieved remains with his nation for all time and becomes a permanent
basis of determination for all its further development.
In the higher conception of the word considered in general from the
viewpoint of an insight into a spiritual world, a nation is this: The
totality of human beings living together in society and constantly
perpetuating themselves both bodily and spiritually; and this totality
stands altogether under a certain specific law through which the
divine develops itself. The universality of this specific law is what
binds this multitude into a natural totality, inter-penetrated by
itself, in the eternal world, and, for that very reason, in the
temporal world as well. The law itself, in its essence, can be
generally comprehended as we have applied it to the case of the
Germans as a primal nation; through consideration of the phenomena
of such a nation it may be even more exactly grasped in many of its
further determinations; yet it can never be entirely understood by any
one who, unknown to himself, personally remains continually under its
influence; it may in general, however, be clearly perceived that
such a law exists. This law is a surplus of the figurative
which amalgamates directly with the surplus of the unfigurative
primitiveness in the phenomenon, and thus, precisely in the
phenomenon, both are then no longer separable. That law absolutely
determines and completes what has been called the national character
of a people--the law, namely, of the development of the primitive and
of the divine. From the latter it is clear that men who do not in the
least believe in a primitive being and in a further development of
it, but simply in an eternal circle of visible life, and who, through
their belief, become what they believe, are no nation whatsoever in
the higher sense; and since they do not, strictly speaking, actually
exist, they are equally powerless to possess a national character.
The belief of the noble-minded man in the eternal continuance of his
activity, even upon this earth, is based, accordingly, on the hope
for the eternal continuance of the nation from which he has himself
developed, and of its individuality in accordance with that hidden
law, without intermixture and corruption by any alien element and
by what does not appertain to the totality of this legislation.
This individuality is the permanent element to which he intrusts the
eternity of himself and of his continued action--the eternal order
of things in which he lays his perpetuity. He must desire its
continuance, for it is alone the releasing agency whereby the brief
span of his life here is extended to a continuous life upon the earth.
His belief and his endeavor to plant what shall not pass away, and
the concept in which he comprehends his own life as an eternal life,
constitute the bond which most intimately associates with himself,
first, his own nation and, through that, the entire human race--which
brings the needs of them all, to the end of time, into his broadened
heart. This is his love for his nation, and through it, first, he
respects, trusts, rejoices in it, and takes pride in his descent from
it; the Divine has appeared in it, and has deigned to make it his
covering and his means of direct communication with the world; the
Divine, therefore, will continue to break forth from it. Therefore
man is, secondly, active, efficacious, and self-sacrificing for his
nation. Life, simply as life, as a continuance of changing existence,
has certainly never possessed value for him apart from this--he has
desired it merely as the source of the permanent. This permanence,
however, alone promises him the independent continuance of the
existence of his nation; and to save this he must even be willing to
die that it may live, and that in it he may live the only life that
has ever been possible to him.
Thus it is. Love, to be really love, and not merely a transitory
desire, never clings to the perishable, but is awakened and kindled
by, and based upon, the eternal only. Man is not even able to love
himself unless he consider himself as eternal; moreover, he cannot
even esteem and approve himself. Still less can he love anything
outside himself, except, that is, that he receive it within the
eternity of his belief and of his soul, and connect it with this
eternity. He who does not, first of all, regard himself as eternal,
has no love whatever, nor can he, moreover, love a fatherland, since
nothing of the sort exists for him. It is true that he who, perchance,
regards his invisible life as eternal, but who does not, therefore,
esteem his visible life as eternal in the same sense, may perhaps
have a heaven, and in this his fatherland, but here on earth he has no
fatherland; for this also is seen only under the metaphor of eternity
and, indeed, of visible eternity, rendered perceptible to the senses;
moreover, he cannot, therefore, love his fatherland. If such a man has
none, he is to be pitied; but he to whom one has been given, and
in whose soul heaven and earth, the invisible and the visible,
interpenetrate, and thus for the first time create a true and worthy
heaven, fights to the last drop of his blood again to transmit the
precious possession undiminished to posterity.
Thus has it been from time immemorial, though it has not been
expressed from time immemorial with this generality and with this
clearness. What inspired the noble spirits among the Romans, whose
sentiments and mode of thought still live and breathe among us in
their monuments, to struggle and to sacrifice, to endure and be
patient, for their fatherland? They themselves state it frequently and
clearly. It was their firm belief in the eternal continuance of their
Rome, and their confident expectation of themselves continuing to live
in this eternity. In so far as this conviction had foundation, and
in so far as they themselves would have grasped it if they had been
perfectly clear within themselves, it never deceived them.
Unto this day what was really eternal in their eternal Rome lives on
and they with it in our midst, and it will continue to live, in its
results, until the end of time.
In this sense--as the vehicle and the pledge of earthly eternity,
and the interpretation of the eternal here--nation and fatherland
far transcend the State in the ordinary sense of the term social
organization, as this is conceived in its simple, clear connotation,
and as it is founded and maintained in accordance with this
conception--a conception which demands sure justice and internal
peace, and requires that every one through his efforts obtain his
support and the prolongation of his sentient existence so long as God
will grant it to him. All this is only a means, a condition, and a
scaffolding of what patriotism really means--the development of the
eternal and the divine in the world, which is ever to become purer,
more perfect in infinite progression. For that very reason this
patriotism must, first of all, rule the State itself as absolutely the
highest, ultimate, and independent authority, by limiting it in the
choice of means for its immediate purpose--inner peace. To reach this
goal, the natural freedom of the individual must be limited in many
ways, it is true; and if this were absolutely the only consideration
and intention regarding them, it would be well to restrict this
liberty as closely as possible, in order to bring all their movements
under one uniform rule, and to keep them under constant supervision.
Granted that such severity be necessary, it could at least do no harm
for this single end; only the higher concept of the human race and of
the nations widens this limited view. Even in the manifestations
of external life freedom is the soil in which the higher culture
germinates; a legislation which keeps this later aim in view will give
the broadest possible scope to freedom, even at the risk that a less
degree of uniform quiet and calm may result, and that government may
become a little more difficult and laborious.
To elucidate this by an example--it has been known to happen that
nations have been told to their faces that they did not require as
much freedom as many other nations do. This statement might, indeed,
be dictated by forbearance and a desire to palliate, the true meaning
being that they were utterly unable to endure so great freedom and
that only a high degree of rigidity could prevent them from destroying
one another. If, however, the words are taken as they are spoken,
they are true under the presupposition that such a nation is entirely
incapable of the natural life and of the impulse toward it. Such a
nation--in case such a one, in which some few of the nobler sort did
not make an exception to the general rule, were possible--would indeed
require no freedom whatever, since this is only for the higher ends
which transcend the State; it requires simply taming and training in
order that the individuals may live peaceably side by side, and that
the whole may be made an efficient means for arbitrary ends which
lie outside its proper sphere. We need not decide whether this may
truthfully be said of any nation whatever; but this much is clear,
that a primitive nation requires freedom, that this freedom is the
pledge of its persistence as a primitive people, and that, as it
continues, it bears, without any danger, an ever ascending degree of
freedom. And this is the first example of the necessity of patriotism
governing the state itself.
It must, then, be patriotism which governs the state in that it sets
for it itself a higher end than the ordinary one of the maintenance of
the internal peace, of the property, of the personal freedom, of the
life, and of the well-being of all. Solely for this higher end, and
with no other intention, the state assembles an armed force. When the
problem of the application of this armed force arises, when it is
a question of hazarding all the aims of the state in the
abstract-property, personal freedom, life, welfare, and the
continuance of the state itself--when, answerable to God alone, they
are called upon to decide without a clear and rational conception of
the sure attainment of the end in view, which in matters of this sort
it is never possible to gain--then only the true primitive life holds
the rudder of the state, and here for the first time enters the true
sovereign right of the government, like God, to imperil the lower
life for the sake of the higher. In the maintenance of the traditional
organization, of the laws, and of civic welfare, there is absolutely
no genuine life and no primitive decision. Circumstances and
situations, legislators who have perhaps long been dead, have created
those things; succeeding ages go trustingly forward in the road they
have entered, and thus, as a matter of fact, they do not live a public
life of their own, but merely repeat a former. In such periods there
is no need of a real government. If, however, this uniform progress
is imperiled, and the problem arises of deciding with reference to
new cases, then a life is required which has its roots in itself. What
spirit is it, now, which in such cases may take its place at the helm,
which is able to decide with individual certainty and without uneasy
wavering, and which has an indubitable right authoritatively to lay
demands upon every one who may be concerned, whether he will or not,
and to compel the recalcitrant to imperil everything, even to his
life? Not the spirit of calm civilian love for the constitution and
the laws, but the burning flame of the higher patriotism which regards
the nation as the veil of the eternal, for which the noble joyfully
sacrifices himself, and for which the ignoble, who exists only for
the sake of the noble, should also sacrifice himself! It is not that
civilian love for the constitution, for this is absolutely incapable
of such action if it is founded on reason only.
Whatever may be the outcome, since governance is not unrewarded, some
one will always be found to take charge of it. Let the new ruler even
favor slavery (and in what does slavery consist except in contempt
and suppression of the individuality of a primitive people?), since
advantage may be derived from the life of slaves, from their number,
and even from their welfare, then slavery will be endurable under him
provided he is a calculator to any extent. They will at least always
find life and support. Why, then, should they thus struggle? According
to both of them, it is peace which transcends everything in their
opinion, but this is disturbed only by the continuance of the
struggle. The slave, therefore, puts forth every effort to end it
quickly; he will yield and submit--and why should he not? He never had
a higher purpose, and he has never expected anything more from life
than the continuance of his existence under endurable conditions. The
promise of a life lasting, even here, beyond the duration of earthly
life--this alone is what can inspire him to death for the fatherland.
Thus it has always been. Wheresoever real government has existed,
where serious struggles have been fought out, where victory has been
won against mighty resistance, it has been the promise of eternal
life that governed and fought and conquered. The German Protestants,
formerly mentioned in these addresses, fought with faith in this
promise. Did they not perhaps know that nations might also be governed
with the old faith and be held in legal order, and that a good
livelihood might be found under this faith also? Why, then, did
their princes thus determine upon armed resistance, and why did their
peoples lend themselves to it with enthusiasm? It was heaven and
eternal happiness for which they gladly shed their blood. Yet what
earthly power could then have penetrated into the inmost sanctuary of
their souls and have been able to eradicate the faith which had now
once sprung up within them, and on which alone they based their hope
of salvation? It was not, therefore, their own happiness for which
they struggled--of that they were already assured; it was the
happiness of their children, of their grandchildren still unborn,
and of all posterity. These, too, should be brought up in the same
doctrine which alone seemed to them to bring salvation; they, too,
should share in the salvation which had dawned for them. It was this
hope alone that was threatened by the foe; for that hope, for an order
of things which should bloom above their graves long after they were
dead, they shed their blood thus joyfully. If we grant that they were
not entirely clear to themselves, that in their designation of the
noblest they verbally mistook what was within them, and with their
mouths did injustice to their souls; if we willingly acknowledge that
their confession of faith was not the sole and exclusive means of
attaining heaven beyond the grave--yet, this, at least, is eternally
true that more heaven on this side of the grave, a more courageous and
more joyous lifting of the gaze above the earth, and a freer impulse
of spirit have come through their sacrifice into all the life of
succeeding ages; and the descendants of their opponents, as well as
we ourselves, their own descendants, enjoy the fruits of their labors
unto this day.
In this belief our oldest common ancestors, the parent nation of
civilization, the Teutons whom the Romans called Germans, boldly
opposed the advancing world-dominion of the Romans. Did they not then
see before their eyes the higher bloom of the Roman provinces near
them, the more refined enjoyments in them, and, in addition, laws,
judgment-seats, rods, and axes in superabundance? Were not the Romans
willing enough to allow them to share in all these blessings? Did they
not experience, in the case of several of their own princes who had
allowed themselves to be persuaded that war against such benefactors
of humanity was rebellion, proofs of the lauded Roman clemency,
since Rome adorned these submissive lords with kingly titles, with
generalships in their armies, and with Roman fillets, and gave
them, if, perchance, they had been driven out by their compatriots,
maintenance and a place of refuge in their colonies? Had they no
feeling for the advantages of Roman culture, as, for example, for the
better organization of their armies, in which even an Arminius did
not disdain to learn the trade of war? None of all these ignorances
or negligences is to be charged against them. Their descendents even
adopted the culture of the Romans as soon as they could do it without
loss of their freedom and in so far as it was possible without
impairment of their individuality. Why did they, then, thus struggle
for several generations in sanguinary war, ever renewed with the same
virulence? A Roman author makes their leaders ask "whether anything
was then left for them except either to assert their freedom or to die
before they became slaves?" Freedom meant to them that they remained
Germans, that they continued to decide their affairs independently,
in conformity with their national genius, and, likewise in conformity
with this spirit, that they continued to go forward in their
development and transmitted this independence to their posterity;
slavery meant to them all the blessings which the Romans offered them,
because in that case they must be something else than Germans--they
might be half Romans. It is self-evident, they presuppose, that every
one would rather die than become thus, and that a true German can wish
to live only that he may be and remain forever a German and may train
all that belong to him to be Germans also.
They have not all died; they have not seen slavery; they have
bequeathed liberty to their children. All the modern world owes it to
their stubborn resistance that it exists as it does. If the Romans had
succeeded in subjugating them also and, as the Roman everywhere did,
in eradicating them as a nation, then the entire future development of
mankind would have taken a direction that we cannot imagine would
have been more pleasant. We, the immediate heirs of their land, their
language, and their thought, owe it to them that we be still Germans,
that the stream of primitive and independent life still bear us on;
to them we owe everything that we have since become as a nation; and,
unless we have now perhaps come to an end, and unless the last drop
of blood inherited from them is dried up in our veins, we shall owe
to them all that we shall be in the future. Even the other Teutonic
races, among whom are our brethren, and who have now become foreigners
to us, owe to them their existence; when they conquered eternal Rome,
no one of all these nations yet existed; at that time the possibility
of their future origin was simultaneously won in the struggle.
These, and all others in universal history who have been of their type
of thought, have conquered because the eternal inspired them, and thus
this inspiration ever and of necessity prevails over him who is not
inspired. It is not the might of arms nor the fitness of weapons
that wins victories, but the power of the soul. He who sets himself
a limited goal for his sacrifices, and who can dare no further than a
certain point, surrenders resistance as soon as the danger reaches a
crisis where he cannot yield or dodge. He who has set himself no limit
whatsoever, but who hazards everything, even life--the highest
boon that can be lost on earth--never ceases to resist, and, if his
opponent has a more limited goal, he indubitably conquers. A people
that is capable, though it be only in its highest representatives and
leaders, of keeping firmly before its vision independence, the face
from the spirit world, and of being inspired with love for it, as
were our remotest forefathers, surely conquers a people that, like the
Roman armies, is used merely as a tool for foreign dominion and for
the subjugation of independent nations; for the former have everything
to lose, the latter have merely something to gain. But even a whim can
prevail over the mental attitude which regards war as a game of hazard
for temporal gain or loss, and which, even before the game starts, has
fixed the limit of the stake. Think, for example, of a Mohammed--not
the real Mohammed of history, concerning whom I confess that I have
no judgment, but the Mohammed of a distinguished French poet--who
had once become firmly convinced that he was one of the extraordinary
natures who are called to guide the obscure and common folk of earth,
and to whom, in consequence of this first presupposition, all his
whims, however meagre and limited they may really be, must necessarily
appear to be great, exalted and inspiring ideas because they are his
own, while everything that opposes them must seem obscure, common
folk, enemies of their own weal, evil-minded, and hateful. Such a man,
in order to justify this self-conceit to himself as a divine vocation,
and entirely absorbed in this thought, must stake everything upon it,
nor can he rest until he has trampled under foot all that will not
think as highly of him as he does himself, or until his own belief in
his divine mission is reflected from the whole contemporary world. I
shall not say what would be his fortunes in case a spiritual vision
that is true and clear within itself should actually come against
him on the field of battle, but he certainly wins from those limited
gamblers, for he hazards everything against those who do not so
hazard; no spirit inspires them, but he is altogether inspired by a
fanatical spirit--that of his mighty and powerful self-conceit.
It follows from all this that the state, as mere governance of human
life proceeding in its normal peaceable course, is not a primal thing
and one existing for itself, but that it is simply the means to the
higher end of the eternally uniform development of the purely human in
this nation; that it is only the vision and the love of this eternal
development which is continually to guide the higher outlook upon the
administration of the state, even in periods of calm, and which alone
can save the independence of the nation when this is endangered. In
the case of the Germans, among whom, as being a primitive people, this
love of country was possible and, as we firmly believe, has actually
existed hitherto, such patriotism could, up to our own time, count
with a high degree of certainty upon the safety of its most important
interests. As was the case only among the Greeks in antiquity, among
the Germans the State and the nation were actually severed from
each other, and each was represented separately; the former in the
individual German kingdoms and principalities; the latter visibly in
the Federation of the Empire, and invisibly--valid not in consequence
of written law but as a sequence of a law living in the hearts of all,
and in its results striking the eyes at every turn--in a multitude
of customs and institutions. As far as the German language extended,
every one who saw the light within its domain could regard himself
as a citizen in a two-fold sense, partly of his natal city, to whose
immediate protection he was recommended; and partly of the entire
common fatherland of the German nation. Throughout the whole extent of
this fatherland each man might seek for himself that culture which was
most akin to his spirit, or he might search for the sphere of activity
most suited for it; and talent did not grow into its place, like a
tree, but he was permitted to search for that place. He who became
estranged from his immediate surroundings through the direction taken
by his culture, easily found welcome reception elsewhere; he found new
friends instead of those whom he had lost; he found time and quiet in
which to explain himself more accurately and perhaps to win over and
to reconcile the wrathful themselves, and thus to unite the whole. No
German-born prince could ever bring himself to mark off the fatherland
of his subjects within the mountains or rivers where he ruled, and to
regard them as bound to the soil. A truth which could not be uttered
in one place might be proclaimed in another, where, perhaps, on the
contrary, those truths were forbidden which were allowable in the
former district; and thus, despite many instances of partiality and
narrow-mindedness in the individual states, in Germany, taken as
a whole, was found the utmost freedom of investigation and of
communication that ever a nation possessed. Higher culture was, and
remained on every hand, the result of the reciprocity of the citizens
of all German states, and this higher culture then gradually descended
in this form to the greater masses, who, consequently, have always,
on the whole, continued to educate themselves. As has been said, no
German with a German heart, placed at the head of a government, has
ever diminished this essential pledge of the continuance of a German
nation; and even though, in view of other primitive decisions, what
the higher German patriotism must desire was not invariably to
be effected, yet at least there was no direct opposition to its
interests; no effort was made to undermine that love, to eradicate it,
and to replace it by an antagonistic love.
But if, now, the original guidance both of that higher culture and
of the national power--which should be used only in behalf of that
culture and to further its continuance--the employment of German
wealth and German blood is to pass from the supremacy of the German
spirit to that of another, what would then necessarily result?
Here is the place where there is special need of applying the policy
which we outlined in our first address, namely, to be unwilling to
be deceived in regard to our own interest, and to have the courage
willingly to see the truth and acknowledge it. Moreover, it is still
permissible, so far as I know, to talk with one another in German
about our fatherland, or at least to sigh in German, and, I
believe, we should not do well if we ourselves precipitated such an
interdiction and wished to lay the fetters of individual timidity on
the courage which, no doubt, will already have considered the risk of
the venture.
Well then, picture to yourself the presupposed new régime to be as
kind and as benevolent as you will; make it good as God; will you also
be able to invest it with divine understanding? Even though it may, in
all earnestness, desire the highest happiness and welfare of all,
will the best welfare that it can comprehend also be the welfare of
Germany? I accordingly hope that I shall be perfectly understood in
reference to the main point that I have presented to you today; I hope
that in the course of my remarks many have thought and felt that I
merely express clearly in words what has always lain within their
hearts; I hope the same will be the case with the other Germans
who will some day read this address. Several Germans have said
approximately the same things before me, and that sentiment has
lain obscurely at the basis of the opposition continually manifested
against a merely mechanical establishment and estimate of the State.
And now I challenge all who are acquainted with modern foreign
literature to prove to me what later sage, poet, or lawgiver among
them has ever given birth to a prophetic thought similar to this,
which regarded the human race as being in continual progress, and
which correlated all its temporal activity only with this progress;
whether any one of them, even in the period when they soared most
boldly to political creation, demanded from the state more than
equality, internal peace, external national fame, and, when their
demands reached the extreme limit, domestic happiness? If this is
their highest conception, as must be deduced from all that has been
said, they can attribute to us likewise no higher needs and no
higher demands upon life, and--always presupposing those beneficent
sentiments toward us and an absence of all selfishness and of all
desire to be more than we--they believe that they have made admirable
provision for us when they give us all that they alone recognize as
desirable. On the other hand, that for which alone the nobler soul
among us can live is then eradicated from public life, and the people,
who have always shown themselves receptive toward the impulses of
higher things, and the majority of whom, it might be hoped, could even
be raised to that nobility, are--in so far as it is treated as they
wish it to be treated--abased beneath its rank, dishonored, and
blotted out, since it coalesces with the populace of the baser sort.
If, now, those higher claims upon life, together with the sense of
their divine right, still remain living and potent in any one, he,
with deep indignation, feels himself crushed back into those first
ages of Christianity in which it was said: "Resist not evil: but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also. And if any man will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak
also." And rightly so, for as long as he still sees a cloak upon thee,
he seeks an opportunity to quarrel with thee in order to take this
also from thee; not until thou art utterly naked dost thou escape his
attention and art unmolested by him. Even his higher feelings, which
do him honor, make earth a hell and an abomination to him; he wishes
that he had not been born; he wishes that his eyes may close to the
light of day, the sooner the better; unceasing sorrow lays hold upon
his days until the grave claims him; he can wish for those dear to him
no better gift than a quiet and contented spirit, that with less pain
they may live on in expectation of an eternal life beyond the grave.
These addresses lay upon you the task of preventing, by the sole means
which still remains after the others have been tried in vain, the
destruction of every nobler impulse that may in the future possibly
arise among us and this debasement of our entire nation. They present
to you a true and omnipotent patriotism, which, in the conception
of our nation as of one that is eternal, and as citizens of our own
eternity, is to be deeply and ineradicably founded in the minds of
all, by means of education. What this education may be, and in what
way it may be achieved, we shall see in the following addresses.
[Illustration: VOLUNTEERS OF 1813 BEFORE KING FRIEDRICH WILHELM III IN
BRESLAU _From the Painting by F.W. Scholtz_]
* * * * *
ADDRESS FOURTEEN
Conclusion of the Whole
The addresses which I here conclude have, indeed, been directed
primarily to you,[4] but they had in view the entire German nation;
and, in intention, they have gathered about them, in the space wherein
you visibly breathe, all that would be capable of understanding
them as far as the German tongue extends. Should I have succeeded in
casting into any bosom throbbing before my eyes some sparks which may
glimmer on and take life, it is not in my thought that they remain
solitary and alone, but, traversing the whole ground in common, I
would gather about them similar sentiments and purposes and weld them
so unitedly that a continuous and coherent flame of patriotic thought
might spread and be enkindled from this centre over the soil of the
fatherland and to its furthest bounds. My addresses have not been
directed to this generation for the pastime of idle ears and eyes, but
I desire at last to know--even as every one who is like-minded should
know--whether there is anything outside us that is akin to our type
of thought. Every German who still believes that he is a member of a
nation, who thinks of it in grand and noble fashion, who hopes in it,
and who dares, suffers, and endures for it, should at last be torn
from the uncertainty of his belief; he should clearly discern whether
he is right or whether he is only a fool and a fanatic; henceforth he
should either continue his path with sure and joyous consciousness,
or, with healthy resolution, should renounce a fatherland here below
and comfort himself solely with that which is in heaven. To you,
therefore, not as such-and-such persons in our daily and circumscribed
life, but as representatives of the nation, and, through your ears, to
the nation as a whole, these addresses appeal.
Centuries have passed since you have been convened as you are
today--in such numbers, in so great, so insistent, so mutual an
interest, so absolutely as a nation and as Germans. Never again will
you be so bidden. If you do not listen now and examine yourselves, if
you again let these addresses pass you by as an empty tickling of the
ears or as a strange prodigy, no human being will longer take account
of you. Hear at last for once; for once at last reflect! Only do not
go this time from the spot without having made a firm resolve; let
every one who hears this voice make this resolution within himself
and for himself, even as though he were alone and must do everything
alone. If very many individuals think thus, there will soon be a great
whole uniting into a single, close-knit power. If, on the contrary,
each one, excluding himself, relies on the rest and relinquishes the
affair to others, then there are no others at all, for, even though
combined, all remain just as they were before. Make it on the
spot--this resolution! Do not say, "Yet a little more sleep, a
little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep," until,
perchance, improvement shall come of itself. It will never come of
itself. He who has once missed the opportunity of yesterday, when
clear perception would have been easier, will not be able to make
up his mind today, and will certainly be even less able to do so
tomorrow. Every delay only makes us still more inert and but lulls us
more and more into gentle acquiescence to our wretched plight. Neither
could the external stimulations to reflection ever be stronger and
more insistent, for surely he whom these present conditions do not
arouse has lost all feeling. You have been called together to make
a last, determined resolution and decision--not by any means to give
commands and mandates to others, or to depute others to do the work
for you. No, my purpose is to urge you to do the work yourself. In
this connection that idle passing of resolutions, the will to will,
some time or other, are not sufficient, nor is it enough to remain
sluggishly satisfied until self-improvement sets in of its own
accord. On the contrary, from you is demanded a determination which
is identical with action and with life itself, and which will continue
and control, unwavering and unchilled, until it gains its goal.
Or is perchance the root, from which alone can grow a tenacity of
purpose which takes hold upon life, utterly eradicated and vanished
within you? Or is your whole being actually rarefied into a hollow
shade, devoid of sap and blood and of individual power of movement, or
dissolved to a dream in which, indeed, a motley array of faces arise
and busily cross one another, but the body lies stiff and dead? Long
since it has been openly proclaimed to our generation and repeated
under every guise, that this is very nearly its condition. Its
spokesmen have believed that this was declared merely in insult, and
have regarded themselves as challenged to return the insults, thinking
that thus the affair would resume its natural course. As for the rest,
there was not the slightest trace of change or of improvement. If
you have heard this, and if it was capable of rousing your
indignation--well then, through your very actions, give the lie to
those who thus think and speak of you. Once show yourselves to be
different before the eyes of all the world, and before the eyes of all
the world they will be convicted of their falsehood. It may be that
they have spoken thus harshly of you with the precise intention of
forcing this refutation from you, and because they despaired of any
other means of arousing you. How much better, then, would have been
their intentions toward you than were the purposes of those who
flattered you that you might be kept in sluggish calm and in careless
thoughtlessness!
However weak and powerless you may be, during this period clear and
calm reflection has been vouchsafed you as never before. What
really plunged us into confusion regarding our position, into
thoughtlessness, into a blind way of letting things go, was our sweet
complacency with ourselves and our mode of existence. Things had thus
gone on hitherto, and so they continued and would continue to go. If
any one challenged us to reflect, we triumphantly showed him, instead
of any other refutation, our continued existence which went on without
any thought or effort on our part; yet things flowed along simply
because we were not put to the test. Since that time we have passed
through the ordeal and it might be supposed that the deceptions, the
delusions, and the false consolations with which we all misguided one
another would have collapsed! The innate prejudices which, without
proceeding from this point or from that, spread over all like a
natural cloud and wrapped all in the same mist, ought surely, by this
time, to have utterly vanished! That twilight no longer obscures our
eyes, and can therefore no longer serve for an excuse. Now we stand,
naked and bare, stripped of all alien coverings and draperies, simply
as ourselves. Now it must appear what each self is, or is not.
Some one among you might come forward and ask me "What gives you in
particular, the only one among all German men and authors, the special
task, vocation, and prerogative of convening us and inveighing against
us? Would not any one among the thousands of the writers of Germany
have exactly the same right to do this as you have? None of them does
it; you alone push yourself forward." I answer that each one would,
indeed, have had the same right as I, and that I do it for the very
reason that no one among them has done it before me; that I would be
silent if any one else had spoken previous to me. This was the first
step toward the goal of a radical amelioration, and some one must take
it. I seemed to be the first vividly to perceive this--accordingly, it
was I who first took it. After this, a second step will be taken, and
thereto every one has now the same right; but, as a matter of fact,
it, in its turn, will be taken by but one individual. One man must
always be the first, and let him be he who can!
Without anxiety regarding this circumstance, let your attention rest
for an instant on the consideration to which we have previously led
you--in how enviable a position Germany and the world would be if the
former had known how to utilize the good fortune of her position and
to recognize her advantage. Let your eyes rest upon what they both
are now, and let your minds be penetrated by the pain and indignation
which, in this reflection, must lay hold upon every noble soul. Then
examine yourselves and see that it is you who can release the age from
the errors of ancient times, and that, if only you will permit it,
your own eyes can be cleared of the mist that covers them; learn, too,
that it has been vouchsafed to you, as to no generation before you, to
undo what has been done and to efface the dishonorable interval from
the annals of the German nation.
Let the various conditions among which you must choose pass before
you. If you drift along in your torpor and your heedlessness, all the
evils of slavery await you--deprivations, humiliations, the scorn and
arrogance of the conqueror; you will be pushed about from pillar to
post, because you have never found your proper niche, until, through
the sacrifice of your nationality and of your language, you slip into
some subordinate place where your nation shall sink its identity. If,
on the other hand, you rouse yourselves, you will find, first of all,
an enduring and honorable existence, and will behold a flourishing
generation which promises to you and to the Germans the most glorious
and lasting memory. Through the instrumentality of this new generation
you will see in spirit the German name exalted to the most glorious
among all nations; you will discern in this nation the regenerator and
restorer of the world.
It depends upon you whether you will be the last of a dishonorable
race, even more surely despised by posterity than it deserves, and in
whose history--if there can be any history in the barbarism which will
then begin--succeeding generations will rejoice when it perishes and
will praise fate that it is just; or whether you will be the beginning
and the point of development of a new age which will be glorious
beyond all your expectations, and become those from whom posterity
will date the year of their salvation. Bethink yourselves that you
are the last in whose power this great change lies. You have heard
the Germans called a unit; you have still a visible sign of their
unity--an Empire and an Imperial League--or you have heard of it;
among you even yet, from time to time, voices have been audible which
were inspired by this higher patriotism. After you become accustomed
to other concepts and will accept alien forms and a different course
of occupation and of life--how long will it then be before no one
longer lives who has seen Germans or who has heard of them?
What is demanded of you is not much. You should only keep before you
the necessity of pulling yourselves together for a little time and of
reflecting upon what lies immediately and obviously before your eyes.
You should merely form for yourselves a fixed opinion regarding
this situation, remain true to it, and utter and express it in your
immediate surroundings. It is the presupposition, yea, it is our firm
conviction, that this reflection will lead to the same result in all
of you; that, if you only seriously consider, and do not continue in
your previous heedlessness, you will think in harmony; and that,
if you can bring your intelligence to bear, and if only you do not
continue to vegetate, unanimity and unity of spirit will come of
themselves. If, however, matters once reach this point, all else that
we need will result automatically.
This reflection is, moreover, demanded from each one of you who can
still consider for himself something lying obviously before his eyes.
You have time for this; events will not take you unawares; the records
of the negotiations conducted with you will remain before your eyes.
Lay them not from your hands until you are in unity with your selves.
Neither let, oh, let not yourselves be made supine by reliance upon
others or upon anything whatsoever that lies outside yourselves, nor
yet through the unintelligent belief of our time that the epochs of
history are made by the agency of some unknown power without any aid
from man. These addresses have never wearied in impressing upon you
that absolutely nothing can help you but yourselves, and they find it
necessary to repeat this to the last moment. Rain and dew, fruitful or
unfruitful years, may indeed be made by a power which is unknown to us
and is not under our control; but only men themselves--and absolutely
no power outside them--give to each epoch its particular stamp. Only
when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they fall the victims
of this hidden power, though it is within their own control not to
be blind and ignorant. It is true that to whatever degree, greater
or less, things may go ill with us, in part depends upon that unknown
power; but far more is it dependent upon the intelligence and the good
will of those to whom we are subjected. Whether, on the other hand,
it will ever again be well with us depends wholly upon ourselves;
and surely nevermore will any welfare whatsoever come to us unless we
ourselves acquire it for ourselves--especially unless each individual
among us toils and labors in his own way as though he were alone and
as though the salvation of future generations depended solely upon
him.
This is what you have to do; and these addresses adjure you to do this
without delay.
They adjure you, young men! I, who have long since ceased to belong
to you, maintain--and I have also expressed my conviction in these
addresses--that you are yet more capable of every thought transcending
the commonplace, and are more easily aroused to all that is good and
great, because your time of life still lies closer to the years of
childish innocence and of nature. Very differently does the majority
of the older generation regard this fundamental trait in you. It
accuses you of arrogance, of a rash, presumptuous judgment which soars
beyond your strength, of obstinacy, and of desire of innovation; yet
it merely smiles good-naturedly at these, your errors. All this, it
thinks, is based simply on your lack of knowledge of the world, that
is, of universal human corruption, since it has eyes for nothing else
on earth. You are now supposed to have courage only because you hope
to find help-mates like-minded with yourselves and because you do not
know the grim and stubborn resistance which will be opposed to your
projects of improvement. When the youthful fire of your imagination
shall once have vanished, when you shall have perceived the universal
selfishness, idleness, and horror of work, when you yourselves shall
once rightly have tasted the sweetness of plodding on in the customary
rut--then the desire to be better and wiser than all others will soon
fade away. They do not by any chance entertain these good expectations
of you in imagination alone; they have found them confirmed in their
own persons. They must confess that in the days of their foolish youth
they dreamed of improving the world, exactly as you dream today; yet
with increasing maturity they have become tame and quiet as you see
them now. I believe them; in my own experience, which has not been
very protracted, I have seen that young men who at first roused
different hopes nevertheless, later, exactly fulfilled the kind
expectations of mature age. Do this no longer, young men, for how else
could a better generation ever begin? The bloom of youth will indeed
fall from you, and the flame of imagination will cease to be nourished
from itself; but feed this flame and brighten it through clear
thought, make this way of thinking your own, and as an additional gift
you will gain character, the fairest adornment of man. Through this
clear thinking you will preserve the fountain of eternal youth;
however your bodies grow old or your knees become feeble, your spirit
will be reborn in freshness ever renewed, and your character will
stand firm and unchangeable. Seize at once the opportunity here
offered you; reflect clearly upon the theme presented for your
deliberation; and the clarity which has dawned for you in one point
will gradually spread over all others as well.
These addresses adjure you, old men! You are regarded as you have just
heard, and you are told so to your faces; and for his own past the
speaker frankly adds that--excluding the exceptions which, it must
be admitted, not infrequently occur, and which are all the more
admirable--the world is perfectly right with regard to the great
majority among you. Go through the history of the last two or three
decades; everything except yourselves agrees--and even you yourselves
agree, each one in the specialty that does not immediately concern
him--that (always excluding the exceptions, and regarding only the
majority) the greatest uselessness and selfishness are found in
advanced years in all branches, in science as well as in practical
occupations. The whole world has witnessed that every one who desired
the better and the more perfect still had to wage the bitterest battle
with you in addition to the battle with his own uncertainty and with
his other surroundings; that you were firmly resolved that nothing
must thrive which you had not done and known in the same way; that you
regarded every impulse of thought as an insult to your intelligence;
and that you left no power unutilized to conquer in this battle
against improvement--and in fact you generally did prevail. Thus you
were the impeding power against all the improvements which kindly
nature offered us from her ever--youthful womb until you were
gathered to the dust which you were before, and until the succeeding
generations, which were at war with you, had become like unto you and
had adopted your attitude. Now, also, you need only conduct yourselves
as you have previously acted in case of all propositions for
amelioration; you need only again prefer to the general weal your
empty honor in order that there may be nothing between heaven and
earth that you have not already fathomed; then, through this last
battle, you are relieved from all further battle; no improvement
will accrue, but deterioration will follow in the footsteps of
deterioration, and thus there will be much satisfaction in reserve for
you.
No one will suppose that I despise and depreciate old age as old
age. If only the source of primitive life and of its continuance is
absorbed into life through freedom, then clarity--and strength with
it--increases so long as life endures. Such a life is easier to live;
the dross of earthly origin falls away more and ever more; it is
ennobled to the life eternal and strives toward it. The experience
of such an old age is irreconcilable with evil, and it only makes the
means clearer and the skill more adroit victoriously to battle against
wickedness. Deterioration through increasing age is simply the fault
of our time, and it necessarily results in every place where society
is much corrupted. It is not nature which corrupts us--she produces
us in innocence; it is society. He who has once surrendered to the
influence of society must naturally become ever worse and worse the
longer he is exposed to this influence. It would be worth the trouble
to investigate the history of other extremely corrupt generations in
this regard, and to see whether--for example, under the rule of the
Roman emperors--what was once bad did not continually become worse
with increasing age.
First of all, therefore, these addresses adjure you, old men and
experienced--you who form the exception! Confirm, strengthen, counsel
in this matter the younger generation, which reverently looks up to
you. And the rest of you also, who are average souls, they adjure!
If you are not to help, at least do not interfere, this time; do not
again--as always hitherto--put yourselves in the way with your wisdom
and with your thousand hesitations. This thing, like every rational
thing in the world, is not complicated, but simple; and it also
belongs among the thousand matters which you know not. If your wisdom
could save, it would surely have saved us before; for it is you who
have counseled us thus far. Now, like everything else, all this is
forgiven you, and you should no longer be reproached with it. Only
learn at last once to know yourselves, and be silent.
These addresses adjure you men of affairs! With few exceptions you
have thus far been cordially hostile to abstract thought and to all
learning which desired to be something for itself, even though you
demeaned yourselves as if you merely haughtily despised all this.
As far as you possibly could, you held from you the men who did such
things as well as their propositions; the reproach of lunacy, or the
advice that they be sent to the mad-house, was the thanks from you on
which they might usually count. They, in their turn, did not venture
to express themselves regarding you with the same frankness, since
they were dependent upon you; but their innermost thought was this,
that, with a few exceptions, you were shallow babblers and inflated
braggarts, dilettante who have only passed through school, blind
gropers and creepers in the old rut who had neither wish nor ability
for aught else. Give them the lie through your deeds, and to this end
grasp the opportunity now offered you; lay aside that contempt for
profound thought and learning; let yourselves be advised and hear and
learn what you do not know, or else your accusers win their case.
These addresses adjure you, thinkers, scholars, and authors who are
still worthy of this name! In a certain sense that reproach of the men
of affairs was not unjust. You often proceeded too unconcerned in
the realm of abstract thought, without troubling yourselves about the
actual world and without considering how the one might be connected
with the other; you circumscribed your own world for yourselves, and
let the real world lie to one side, disdained and despised. Every
regulation and every formation of actual life must, it is true,
proceed from the higher regulating concept, and progress in the
customary rut is insufficient for it; this is an eternal truth, and,
in God's name, it crushes with undisguised contempt every one who
is so bold as to busy himself with affairs without knowing this. Yet
between the concept and the introduction of it into any individual
life there is a great gulf fixed. The filling of this gulf is the
task both of the men of affairs--who, however, must already first have
learned enough to understand you--and also of yourselves, who should
not forget life on account of the world of thought. Here you both
meet. Instead of regarding each other askance and depreciating each
other across the gulf, endeavor rather to fill it, each on his own
side, and thus seek to construct the road to union. At last, I beg
you, realize that you both are as mutually necessary to each other as
head and arm are indispensable the one to the other.
In other respects as well, these addresses adjure you, thinkers,
scholars, and authors who are still worthy of this name! Your laments
over the general shallowness, thoughtlessness, and superficiality,
over self-conceit and inexhaustible babble, over the contempt for
seriousness and profundity in all classes, may be true, even as they
actually are. Yet what class is it, pray, that has educated all these
classes, that has transformed everything pertaining to science into a
jest for them, and that has trained them from their earliest youth
in that self-conceit and that babble? Who is it, pray, who still
continues to educate the generations that have outgrown the schools?
The most obvious source of the torpor of the age is that it has read
itself torpid in the writings which you have written. Why are you,
nevertheless, so continually solicitous to amuse this idle people,
despite the fact that you know that they have learned nothing and wish
to learn nothing? Why do you call them "the Public," flatter them as
your judge, stir them up against your rivals, and seek by every means
to win this blind and confused mob over to your side? Finally, in your
literary reviews and in your magazines, why do you yourselves furnish
them with material and example for rash judgments by yourselves
judging as unconnectedly, as carelessly, as recklessly, and, for the
most part, as tastelessly as even the least of your readers could?
If you do not all think thus, and if among you there are still some
animated by better sentiments, why, then, do not these latter unite to
put an end to the evil? As to those men of affairs, in particular they
have passed through your schools--you say so yourselves. Why, then,
did you not at least make use of this transit of theirs to inspire in
them some silent respect for learning, and especially to break betimes
the self-conceit of the young aristocrat and to show him that
birth and station are of no assistance in the realm of thought? If,
perchance, even at that time you flattered him and exalted him unduly,
now endure that for which you yourselves are responsible.
These addresses desire to excuse you on the supposition that you had
not grasped the importance of your occupation; they adjure you that,
from this hour, you make yourselves acquainted with this importance,
and that you no longer ply your occupation as a mere trade. Learn to
respect yourselves, and by your actions show that you do so, and the
world will respect you. You will give the first proof of this through
the amount of influence which you assume in regard to the resolution
that is proposed, and through the manner in which you conduct
yourselves regarding it.
These addresses adjure you, princes of Germany! Those who act toward
you as though no man dared say aught to you, or had aught to say, are
despicable flatterers, are base slanderers of you yourselves. Drive
them far from you! The truth is that you were born exactly as ignorant
as all the rest of us, and that, exactly like ourselves, you must hear
and learn if you are to escape from this natural ignorance. Your share
in bringing about the fate which has befallen you simultaneously with
your peoples is here set forth in the mildest way and, as we believe,
in the way which is alone right and just; and in case you wish to
hear only flattery, and never the truth, you cannot complain regarding
these addresses. Let all this be forgotten, even as all the rest of us
also desire that our share in the guilt may be forgotten. Now begins
a new life as well for yourselves as for all of us. May this voice
penetrate to you through all the surroundings which normally make you
inaccessible! With proud self-reliance it dares to say to you: You
rule nations, faithful, plastic, and worthy of good fortune, such as
princes of no time and of no nation have ruled. They have a feeling
for freedom and are capable of it; but, because you so willed, they
have followed you into sanguinary war against that which to them
seemed freedom. Some among you have later willed otherwise, and, again
because you so willed, they have followed you into that which to them
must seem a war of annihilation against one of the last remnants of
German independence. Since that time they have endured and have borne
the oppressive burden of common woes; yet they do not cease to be
faithful to you, to cling to you with inward devotion, and to love
you as their divinely appointed guardians. Yet may you notice them,
unobserved by them; set free from surroundings which do not invariably
present to you the fairest aspect of humanity, may you be able to
descend into the house of the citizen, into the peasant's cottage,
and may you be able attentively to follow the still and hidden life of
these classes, in which the fidelity and the probity which have become
more rare in the higher classes seem to have sought refuge! Surely,
oh, surely, you will resolve to reflect more seriously than ever how
they may be helped! These addresses have proposed to you a means of
assistance which they believe to be sure, thorough, and decisive. Let
your councillors deliberate whether they also find it so or whether
they know a better means, provided only that it be equally decisive.
But the conviction that something must be done and must be done
immediately, that this something must be radical and final, and
that the time for half-measures and procrastination is past--this
conviction these addresses would fain produce, if they could, in
you personally, as they still cherish the utmost confidence in your
integrity.
These addresses adjure you, Germans as a whole, whatever position
you may take in society, that each one among you who can think, think
first of all upon the theme that has been suggested, and that each one
do for it exactly what in his own place lies nearest to him.
Your forefathers unite with these addresses and adjure you. Imagine
that in my voice are mingled the voices of your ancestors from dim
antiquity, who with their bodies opposed the on-rushing dominion of
the world-power of Rome, who with their blood won the independence of
the mountains, plains, and streams which, under your governance, have
become the booty of the stranger. They call to you: Represent us;
transmit to posterity our memory honorable and blameless as it came
to you, and as you have boasted of it and of descent from us. Thus far
our resistance has been held to be noble and great and wise; we seemed
to be initiated into the secrets of the divine plan of the universe.
If our race terminates with you, our honor is turned to shame and our
wisdom to folly. For if the German stock was some time to be merged
into that of Rome, it was better that this had been into the old Rome
than into a new. We faced the former and conquered it; before the
latter you have been scattered like the dust. Now, however, since
affairs are as they are, you are not to conquer them with physical
weapons; only your spirit is to rise and stand upright over against
them. To you has been vouchsafed the greater destiny of establishing
generally the empire of the spirit and of reason, and of wholly
annihilating rude physical power as that which dominates the world. If
you shall do this, then are you worthy of descent from us.
In these voices also mingle the spirits of your later ancestors, of
those who fell in the holy struggle for freedom of religion and of
faith. Save our honor, likewise, they cry to you. It was not wholly
clear to us for what we fought. Besides the legitimate resolve not to
allow ourselves to be dominated in matters of conscience by a foreign
power, we were also impelled by a higher spirit who never revealed
himself entirely unto us. To you this spirit is revealed, if you have
the power to look into the spirit world, and he gazes upon you
with clear and lofty eyes. The motley and confused intermingling of
sensuous and of spiritual impulses is wholly to be deposed from
its world-dominion; and spirit alone, absolute, and stripped of all
sensuous impulses, is to take the helm of human affairs. Our blood was
shed that this spirit might have freedom to develop and to grow to an
independent existence. Upon you it depends to give to this sacrifice
its signification and its justification by installing this spirit into
the world-dominion destined for him. If this is not the final goal
toward which all the development of our nation has thus far aimed,
our struggles, too, become a passing, empty farce, and the freedom of
spirit and of conscience that we won is an empty word, if henceforth
there is to be no longer any spirit or any conscience whatsoever.
Your descendants, still unborn, adjure you. You boast of your
forefathers, they cry to you, and proudly you connect yourselves with
a noble lineage. Take care that the chain may not be broken in you; so
do that we also may boast of you, and that through you, as through
a faultless link, we may connect ourselves with the same glorious
lineage. Cause us not to be compelled to be ashamed of our descent
from you as a descent that is low, barbarous, and slavish, so that
we must conceal our ancestry or must feign an alien name and an alien
lineage, lest we be immediately rejected or trodden under foot without
further test. On the next generation that will proceed from you, will
depend your fame in history: honorable, if this honorably witnesses
for you; but ignominious, even beyond desert, if you have no offspring
to speak for you, and if it is left to the victor to write your
history. Never yet has a victor had sufficient inclination or
sufficient knowledge rightly to judge the conquered. The more he
abases them, the more justified does he appear. Who can know what
mighty deeds, what magnificent institutions, and what noble customs of
many a people of antiquity have been forgotten because their posterity
was subjugated, and because, ungainsaid, the conqueror made his report
upon them in accordance with his interests?
Even foreign lands adjure you so far as they still understand
themselves in the very least, and still have an eye for their true
advantage. Indeed, there are spirits among all peoples who still
cannot believe that the great promises made to the human race of a
reign of justice, of reason, and of truth can be a vain and an empty
phantom, and who assume, therefore, that the present iron age is but
a transit to a better state. They--and all modern humanity in
them--count on you. A great part of this humanity is descended from
us; the rest have received from us religion and culture. The former
adjure us by the soil of our common fatherland, which is also their
cradle, and which they have bequeathed free to us; the latter adjure
us by the culture which they have acquired from us as a pledge of a
higher happiness--they adjure us to maintain ourselves as we have ever
been, for their sake; and not to suffer this member, which is of so
much importance, to be torn from the continuity of the race that is
newly budded, lest they may painfully miss us if they some time need
our counsel, our example, our cooperation toward the true goal of
earthly life.
All generations, all the wise and good who have ever breathed upon
this earth, all their thoughts and aspirations for something higher
mingle in these voices and surround you and lift to you imploring
hands. Even Providence, if we may so say, and the divine plan of the
universe in the creation of a human race--a plan which, indeed, exists
only to be thought out by man and to be realized by man--adjures you
to save its honor and its existence. Whether those are justified
who have believed that mankind must always grow better, and that
the conception of a certain order and dignity among them is no empty
dream, but the prophecy and the pledge of an ultimate actuality,
or whether those are to prevail who slumber on in their animal and
vegetative life, and who mock every flight to higher worlds-upon these
alternatives it is left to you to pass a final and decisive judgment.
The ancient world with its magnificence and with its grandeur, and
also with its faults, has sunk through its own unworthiness and
through your fathers' prowess. If there is truth in what has been
presented in these addresses, then, among all modern peoples, it is
you in whom the germ of the perfecting of humanity most decidedly
lies, and on whom progress in the development of this humanity is
enjoined. If you perish as a nation, all the hope of the entire human
race for rescue from the depths of its woe perishes together with you.
Do not hope and console yourselves with the imaginary idea, counting
on mere repetition of events that have already happened, that once
more, after the fall of the old civilization, a new one, proceeding
from a half-barbarous nation, will arise upon the ruins of the first.
In antiquity such a nation, equipped with all the requisites for
this destiny, was at hand, and was very well known to the nation of
culture, and was described by them; had they been able to imagine
their destruction, they themselves might have found in that
half-barbarous nation the means of their restoration. To us, also, the
entire surface of the earth is very well known, and all the peoples
that live upon it. Do we, then, now know any such people, like to
the aborigines of the New World, of whom similar expectations may be
entertained? I believe that every one who has not merely a fanatical
opinion and hope, but who thinks after profound investigation, will
be compelled to answer this question in the negative. There is,
therefore, no escape; if you sink, all humanity sinks with you, devoid
of hope of restoration at any future time.
This it was, gentlemen, that at the close of these addresses I felt
compelled to impress upon you as representatives of the nation and,
through you, upon the nation as a whole.
_FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING_
* * * * *
ON THE RELATION OF THE PLASTIC ARTS TO NATURE (1807)
A Speech on the Celebration of the 12th October, 1807, as the Name-Day
of His Majesty the King of Bavaria
Delivered before the Public Assembly of the Royal Academy of Sciences
of Munich
TRANSLATED BY J. ELLIOT CABOT
Plastic Art, according to the most ancient expression, is silent
Poetry. The inventor of this definition no doubt meant thereby
that the former, like the latter, is to express spiritual
thoughts--conceptions whose source is the soul; only not by speech,
but, like silent Nature, by shape, by form, by corporeal, independent
works.
Plastic Art, therefore, evidently stands as a uniting link between the
soul and Nature, and can be apprehended only in the living centre of
both. Indeed, since Plastic Art has its relation to the soul in common
with every other art, and particularly with Poetry, that by which
it is connected with Nature, and, like Nature, a productive force,
remains as its sole peculiarity; so that to this alone can a theory
relate which shall be satisfactory to the understanding, and helpful
and profitable to Art itself.
We hope, therefore, in considering Plastic Art in relation to its
true prototype and original source, Nature, to be able to contribute
something new to its theory--to give some additional exactness or
clearness to the conceptions of it; but, above all, to set forth
the coherence of the whole structure of Art in the light of a higher
necessity.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING Carl Begas]
But has not Science always recognized this relation? Has not indeed
every theory of modern times taken its departure from this very
position, that Art should be the imitator of Nature? Such has indeed
been the case. But what should this broad general proposition
profit the artist, when the notion of Nature is of such various
interpretation, and when there are almost as many differing views of
it as there are various modes of life? Thus, to one, Nature is
nothing more than the lifeless aggregate of an indeterminable crowd
of objects, or the space in which, as in a vessel, he imagines things
placed; to another, only the soil from which he draws his nourishment
and support; to the inspired seeker alone, the holy, ever-creative
original energy of the world, which generates and busily evolves all
things out of itself.
The proposition would indeed have a high significance, if it taught
Art to emulate this creative force; but the sense in which it was
meant can scarcely be doubtful to one acquainted with the universal
condition of Science at the time when it was first brought forward.
Singular enough that the very persons who denied all life to Nature
should set it up for imitation in Art! To them might be applied the
words of a profound writer:[5] "Your lying philosophy has put Nature
out of the way; and why do you call upon us to imitate her? Is it that
you may renew the pleasure by perpetrating the same violence on the
disciples of Nature?"
Nature was to them not merely a dumb, but an altogether lifeless
image, in whose inmost being even no living word dwelt; a hollow
scaffolding of forms, of which as hollow an image was to be
transferred to the canvas, or hewn out of stone.
This was the proper doctrine of those more ancient and savage nations,
who, as they saw in Nature nothing divine, fetched idols out of her;
whilst, to the susceptive Greeks, who everywhere felt the presence of
a vitally efficient principle, genuine gods arose out of Nature.
But is, then, the disciple of Nature to copy everything in Nature
without distinction?--and, of everything, every part? Only beautiful
objects should be represented; and, even in these, only the Beautiful
and Perfect.
Thus is the proposition further determined, but, at the same time,
this asserted, that, in Nature, the perfect is mingled with the
imperfect, the beautiful with the unbeautiful. Now, how should he who
stands in no other relation to Nature than that of servile imitation,
distinguish the one from the other? It is the way of imitators to
appropriate the faults of their model sooner and easier than its
excellences, since the former offer handles and tokens more easily
grasped; and thus we see that imitators of Nature in this sense have
imitated oftener, and even more affectionately, the ugly than the
beautiful.
If we regard in things, not their principle, but the empty abstract
form, neither will they say anything to our soul; our own heart, our
own spirit we must put to it, that they answer us.
But what is the perfection of a thing? Nothing else than the creative
life in it, its power to exist. Never, therefore, will he, who fancies
that Nature is altogether dead, be successful in that profound process
(analogous to the chemical) whence proceeds, purified as by fire, the
pure gold of Beauty and Truth.
Nor was there any change in the main view of the relation of Art to
Nature, even when the unsatisfactoriness of the principle began to
be more generally felt; no change, even by the new views and new
knowledge so nobly established by John Winckelmann. He indeed restored
to the soul its full efficiency in Art, and raised it from its
unworthy dependence into the realm of spiritual freedom. Powerfully
moved by the beauty of form in the works of antiquity, he taught that
the production of ideal Nature, of Nature elevated above the Actual,
together with the expression of spiritual conceptions, is the highest
aim of Art.
But if we examine in what sense this surpassing of the Actual by Art
has been understood by the most, it turns out that, with this view
also, the notion of Nature as mere product, of things as a lifeless
result, still continued; and the idea of a living creative Nature
was in no wise awakened by it. Thus these ideal forms also could be
animated by no positive insight into their nature; and if the forms
of the Actual were dead for the dead beholder, these were not less so.
Were no independent production of the Actual possible, neither would
there be of the Ideal. The object of the imitation was changed;
the imitation remained. In the place of Nature were substituted the
sublime works of Antiquity, whose outward forms the pupils busied
themselves in imitating, but without the spirit that fills them. These
forms, however, are as unapproachable, nay, more so, than the works of
Nature, and leave us yet colder if we bring not to them the spiritual
eye to penetrate through the veil and feel the stirring energy within.
On the other hand, artists, since that time, have indeed received a
certain ideal impetus, and notions of a beauty superior to matter;
but these notions were like fair words, to which the deeds do not
correspond. While the previous method in Art produced bodies without
soul, this view taught only the secret of the soul, but not that of
the body. The theory had, as usual, passed with one hasty stride to
the opposite extreme; but the vital mean it had not yet found.
Who can say that Winckelmann had not penetrated into the highest
beauty? But with him it appeared in its dissevered elements only: on
the one side as beauty in idea, and flowing out from the soul; on the
other, as beauty of forms.
But what is the efficient link that connects the two? Or by what power
is the soul created together with the body, at once and as if with one
breath? If this lies not within the power of Art, as of Nature,
then it can create nothing whatever. This vital connecting link,
Winckelmann did not determine; he did not teach how, from the idea,
forms can be produced. Thus Art went over to that method which we
would call the retrograde, since it strives from the form to come
at the essence. But not thus is the Unlimited reached; it is not
attainable by mere enhancement of the Limited. Hence, such works as
have had their beginning in form, with all elaborateness on that side,
show, in token of their origin, an incurable want at the very point
where we expect the consummate, the essential, the final. The miracle
by which the Limited should be raised to the Unlimited, the human
become divine, is wanting; the magic circle is drawn, but the spirit
that it should inclose, appears not, being disobedient to the call of
him who thought a creation possible through mere form.
* * * * *
Nature meets us everywhere, at first with reserve, and in form more or
less severe. She is like that quiet and serious beauty, that excites
not attention by noisy advertisement, nor attracts the vulgar gaze.
How can we, as it were, spiritually melt this apparently rigid form,
so that the pure energy of things may flow together with the force of
our spirit and both become one united mold? We must transcend Form,
in order to gain it again as intelligible, living, and truly felt.
Consider the most beautiful forms; what remains behind after you have
abstracted from them the creative principle within? Nothing but mere
unessential qualities, such as extension and the relations of space.
Does the fact that one portion of matter exists near another, and
distinct from it, contribute anything to its inner essence? or does
it not rather contribute nothing? Evidently the latter. It is not mere
contiguous existence, but the manner of it, that makes form; and this
can be determined only by a positive force, which is even opposed to
separateness, and subordinates the manifoldness of the parts to the
unity of one idea--from the force that works in the crystal to the
force which, comparable to a gentle magnetic current, gives to the
particles of matter in the human form that position and arrangement
among themselves, through which the idea, the essential unity and
beauty, can become visible.
Not only, however, as active principle, but as spirit and effective
science, must the essence appear to us in the form, in order that we
may truly apprehend it. For all unity must be spiritual in nature and
origin; and what is the aim of all investigation of Nature but to find
science therein? For that wherein there is no Understanding cannot
be the object of Understanding; the Unknowing cannot be known. The
science by which Nature works is not, however, like human science,
connected with reflection upon itself; in it, the conception is not
separate from the act, nor the design from the execution. Therefore,
rude matter strives, as it were, blindly, after regular shape,
and unknowingly assumes pure stereometric forms, which belong,
nevertheless, to the realm of ideas, and are something spiritual in
the material.
The sublimest arithmetic and geometry are innate in the stars, and
unconsciously displayed by them in their motions. More distinctly, but
still beyond their grasp, the living cognition appears in animals;
and thus we see them, though wandering about without reflection, bring
about innumerable results far more excellent than themselves: the bird
that, intoxicated with music, transcends itself in soul-like tones;
the little artistic creature, that, without practise or instruction,
accomplishes light works of architecture; but all directed by an
overpowering spirit, that lightens in them already with single flashes
of knowledge, but as yet appears nowhere as the full sun, as in Man.
This formative science in Nature and Art is the link that connects
idea and form, body and soul. Before everything stands an eternal
idea, formed in the Infinite Understanding; but by what means does
this idea pass into actuality and embodiment? Only through the
creative science that is as necessarily connected with the Infinite
Understanding, as in the artist the principle that seizes the idea
of unsensuous Beauty is linked with that which sets it forth to the
senses.
If that artist be called happy and praiseworthy before all to whom
the gods have granted this creative spirit, then that work of art will
appear excellent which shows to us, as in outline, this unadulterated
energy of creation and activity of Nature.
It was long ago perceived that, in Art, not everything is performed
with consciousness; that, with the conscious activity, an unconscious
action must combine; and that it is of the perfect unity and mutual
interpenetration of the two that the highest in Art is born.
Works that want this seal of unconscious science are recognized by
the evident absence of life self-supported and independent of the
producer; as, on the contrary, where this acts, Art imparts to its
work, together with the utmost clearness to the understanding, that
unfathomable reality wherein it resembles a work of Nature.
It has often been attempted to make clear the position of the artist
in regard to Nature, by saying that Art, in order to be such, must
first withdraw itself from Nature, and return to it only in the final
perfection. The true sense of this saying, it seems to us, can be no
other than this--that in all things in Nature, the living idea shows
itself only blindly active; were it so also in the artist, he would be
in nothing distinct from Nature. But, should he attempt consciously to
subordinate himself altogether to the Actual, and render with servile
fidelity the already existing, he would produce _larvae_, but no works
of Art. He must therefore withdraw himself from the product, from the
creature, but only in order to raise himself to the creative energy,
spiritually seizing the same. Thus he ascends into the realm of
pure ideas; he forsakes the creature, to regain it with thousandfold
interest, and in this sense certainly to return to Nature. This spirit
of Nature working at the core of things, and speaking through form
and shape as by symbols only, the artist must certainly follow with
emulation; and only so far as he seizes this with genial imitation
has he himself produced anything genuine. For works produced by
aggregation, even of forms beautiful in themselves, would still be
destitute of all beauty, since that, through which the work on the
whole is truly beautiful, cannot be mere form. It is above form--it
is Essence, the Universal, the look and expression of the indwelling
spirit of Nature.
Now it can scarcely be doubtful what is to be thought of the so-called
idealizing of Nature in Art, so universally demanded. This demand
seems to arise from a way of thinking, according to which not Truth,
Beauty, Goodness, but the contrary of all these, is the Actual. Were
the Actual indeed opposed to Truth and Beauty, it would be necessary
for the artist, not to elevate or idealize it, but to get rid of and
destroy it, in order to create something true and beautiful. But how
should it be possible for anything to be actual except the True; and
what is Beauty, if not full, complete Being?
What higher aim, therefore, could Art have, than to represent that
which in Nature actually _is_? Or how should it undertake to excel
so-called actual Nature, since it must always fall short of it?
For does Art impart to its works actual, sensuous life? This statue
breathes not, is stirred by no pulsation, warmed by no blood.
But both the pretended excelling and the apparent falling short show
themselves as the consequences of one and the same principle, as soon
as we place the aim of Art in the exhibiting of that which truly is.
Only on the surface have its works the appearance of life; in Nature,
life seems to reach deeper, and to be wedded entirely with matter.
But does not the continual mutation of matter and the universal lot
of final dissolution teach us the unessential character of this union,
and that it is no intimate fusion? Art, accordingly, in the merely
superficial animation of its works, but represents Nothingness as
non-existing.
How comes it that, to every tolerably cultivated taste, imitations of
the so-called Actual, even though carried to deception, appear in the
last degree untrue--nay, produce the impression of spectres; whilst a
work in which the idea is predominant strikes us with the full force
of truth, conveying us then only to the genuinely actual world? Whence
comes it, if not from the more or less obscure feeling which tells us
that the idea alone is the living principle in things, but all else
unessential and vain shadow?
On the same ground may be explained all the opposite cases which
are brought up as instances of the surpassing of Nature by Art. In
arresting the rapid course of human years; in uniting the energy of
developed manhood with the soft charm of early youth; or exhibiting
a mother of grown-up sons and daughters in the full possession of
vigorous beauty--what does Art except to annul what is unessential,
Time?
If, according to the remark of a discerning critic, every growth in
Nature has but an instant of truly complete beauty, we may also say
that it has, too, only an instant of full existence. In this instant
it is what it is in all eternity; besides this, it has only a coming
into and a passing out of existence. Art, in representing the thing
at that instant, removes it out of Time, and sets it forth in its pure
Being, in the eternity of its life.
After everything positive and essential had once been abstracted from
Form, it necessarily appeared restrictive, and, as it were, hostile,
to the Essence; and the same theory that had reproduced the false and
powerless Ideal, necessarily tended to the formless in Art. Form would
indeed be a limitation of the Essence if it existed independent of it.
But if it exists with and by means of the Essence, how could this feel
itself limited by that which it has itself created? Violence
would indeed be done it by a form forced upon it, but never by
one proceeding from itself. In this, on the contrary, it must rest
contented, and feel its own existence to be perfect and complete.
Determinateness of form is in Nature never a negation, but ever
an affirmation. Commonly, indeed, the shape of a body seems a
confinement; but could we behold the creative energy it would reveal
itself as the measure that this energy imposes upon itself, and in
which it shows itself a truly intelligent force; for in everything
is the power of self-rule allowed to be an excellence, and one of the
highest.
In like manner most persons consider the particular in a negative
manner--i.e., as that which is not the whole or all. Yet no
particular exists by means of its limitation, but through the
indwelling force with which it maintains itself as a particular Whole,
in distinction from the Universe.
This force of particularity, and thus also of individuality,
showing itself as vital character, the negative conception of it
is necessarily followed by an unsatisfying and false view of the
characteristic in Art. Lifeless and of intolerable hardness would be
the Art that should aim to exhibit the empty shell or limitation of
the Individual. Certainly we desire to see not merely the individual,
but, more than this, its vital Idea. But if the artist has seized the
inward creative spirit and essence of the Idea, and sets this forth,
he makes the individual a world in itself, a class, an eternal
prototype; and he who has grasped the essential character needs not
to fear hardness and severity, for these are the conditions of life.
Nature, that in her completeness appears as the utmost benignity,
we see, in each particular, aiming even primarily and principally at
severity, seclusion and reserve. As the whole creation is the work
of the utmost externization and renunciation [Entäusserung], so
the artist must first deny himself and descend into the Particular,
without shunning isolation, nor the pain, the anguish of Form.
Nature, from her first works, is throughout characteristic; the energy
of fire, the splendor of light, she shuts up in hard stone, the tender
soul of melody in severe metal; even on the threshold of Life, and
already meditating organic shape, she sinks back overpowered by the
might of Form, into petrifaction.
The life of the plant consists in still receptivity, but in what
exact and severe outline is this passive life inclosed! In the animal
kingdom the strife between Life and Form seems first properly to
begin; her first works Nature hides in hard shells, and, where these
are laid aside, the animated world attaches itself again through its
constructive impulse to the realm of crystallization. Finally
she comes forward more boldly and freely, and vital, important
characteristics show themselves, being the same through whole classes.
Art, however, cannot begin so far down as Nature. Though Beauty is
spread everywhere, yet there are various grades in the appearance
and unfolding of the Essence, and thus of Beauty. But Art demands a
certain fulness, and desires not to strike a single note or tone, nor
even a detached accord, but at once the full symphony of Beauty.
Art, therefore, prefers to grasp immediately at the highest and most
developed, the human form. For since it is not given it to embrace
the immeasurable whole, and as in all other creatures only single
fulgurations, in Man alone full entire Being appears without
abatement, Art is not only permitted but required to see the sum of
Nature in Man alone. But precisely on this account--that she here
assembles all in one point--Nature repeats her whole multiformity, and
pursues again in a narrower compass the same course that she had gone
through in her wide circuit.
Here, therefore, arises the demand upon the artist first to be true
and faithful in detail, in order to come forth complete and beautiful
in the whole. Here he must wrestle with the creative spirit of Nature
(which in the human world also deals out character and stamp in
endless variety), not in weak and effeminate, but stout and courageous
conflict.
Persevering exercise in the study of that by virtue of which the
characteristic in things is a positive principle, must preserve him
from emptiness, weakness, inward inanity, before he can venture to
aim, by ever higher combination and final melting together of manifold
forms, to reach the extremest beauty in works uniting the highest
simplicity with infinite meaning.
Only through the perfection of form can Form be made to disappear; and
this is certainly the final aim of Art in the Characteristic. But as
the apparent harmony that is even more easily reached by the empty and
frivolous than by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the quickly
attained harmony of the exterior, without inward fulness. And if it is
the part of theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless copying
of beautiful forms, especially must they oppose the tendency toward
an effeminate characterless Art, which gives itself, indeed, higher
names, but therewith only seeks to hide its incapacity to fulfil the
fundamental conditions.
That lofty Beauty in which the fulness of form causes Form itself to
disappear, was adopted by the modern theory of Art, after Winckelmann,
not only as the highest, but as the only standard. But as the deep
foundation upon which it rests was overlooked, it resulted that a
negative conception was formed even of that which is the sum of all
affirmation.
Winckelmann compares Beauty with water drawn from the bosom of the
spring, which, the less taste it has, the wholesomer it is esteemed.
It is true that the highest Beauty is characterless, but so we say
of the Universe that it has no determinate dimension, neither length,
breadth nor depth, since it has all in equal infinity; or that the Art
of creative Nature is formless, because she herself is subjected to no
form.
In this and in no other sense can we say that Grecian art in its
highest development rises into the characterless; but it did not aim
immediately at this. It was from the bonds of Nature that it struggled
upward to divine freedom. From no lightly scattered seed, but only
from a deeply infolded kernel, could this heroic growth spring up.
Only mighty emotions, only a deep stirring of the fancy through the
impression of all-enlivening, all-commanding energies of Nature,
could stamp upon Art that invincible vigor with which from the rigid,
secluded earnestness of earlier productions up to the period of works
overflowing with sensuous grace, it ever remained faithful to truth,
and produced the highest spiritual Reality which it is given to
mortals to behold.
In like manner, as their Tragedy commences with the grandest
characteristicness in morals, so the beginning of their Plastic Art
was the earnestness of Nature, and the stern goddess of Athens its
first and only Muse.
This epoch is marked by that style which Winckelmann describes as the
still harsh and severe, from which the next or lofty style was able to
develop itself by the mere enhancement of the Characteristic into the
Sublime and the Simple.
For in the statues of the most perfect or divine natures not only
all the complexity of form of which human nature is capable had to
be united, but moreover the union must be such as may be conceived to
exist in the system of the Universe itself--the lower forms, or those
relating to inferior attributes, being comprehended under higher, and
all at last under one supreme form, in which they indeed extinguish
one another as separately existing, but still continue in Essence and
efficiency.
Thus, though we cannot call this high and self-sufficing Beauty
characteristic, so far as herewith is connected the notion of
limitation or conditionality in the manifestation, yet still the
characteristic continues efficient, though indistinguishable, within;
as in the crystal, although transparent, the texture nevertheless
remains; each characteristic element has its weight, however slight,
and helps to bring about the sublime equipoise of Beauty.
The outer side or basis of all Beauty is beauty of form. But as
Form cannot exist without Essence, wherever Form is, there also is
Character, whether in visible presence or only perceptible in its
effects. Characteristic Beauty, therefore, is Beauty in the root,
from which alone Beauty can arise as the fruit. Essence may, indeed,
outgrow Form, but even then the Characteristic remains as the still
efficient groundwork of the Beautiful.
That most excellent critic,[6] to whom the gods have given sway over
Nature as well as Art, compares the Characteristic in its relation to
Beauty, with the skeleton in its relation to the living form. Were we
to interpret this striking simile in our sense, we should say that
the skeleton, in Nature, is not, as in our thought, detached from the
living whole; that the firm and the yielding, the determining and
the determined, mutually presuppose each other, and can exist only
together; thus that the vitally Characteristic is already the whole
form, the result of the action and reaction of bone and flesh, of
Active and Passive. And although Art, like Nature, in its higher
developments, thrusts inward the previously visible skeleton, yet the
latter can never be opposed to Shape and Beauty, since it has always
a determining share in the production of the one as well as of the
other.
But whether that high and independent Beauty should be the only
standard in Art, as it is the highest, seems to depend on the degree
of fulness and extent that belongs to the particular Art.
Nature, in her wide circumference, ever exhibits the higher with the
lower; creating in Man the godlike, she elaborates in all her other
productions only its material and foundation, which must exist in
order that in contrast with it the Essence as such may appear. And
even in the higher world of Man the great mass serves again as the
basis upon which the godlike that is preserved pure in the few,
manifests itself in legislation, government, and the establishment of
Religion. So that wherever Art works with more of the complexity of
Nature, it may and must display, together with the highest measure of
Beauty, also its groundwork and raw material, as it were, in distinct
appropriate forms.
Here first prominently unfolds itself the difference in Nature of the
forms of Art.
Plastic Art, in the more exact sense of the term, disdains to give
Space outwardly to the object, but bears it within itself. This,
however, narrows its field; it is compelled, indeed, to display the
beauty of the Universe almost in a single point. It must therefore aim
immediately at the highest, and can attain complexity only separately
and in the strictest exclusion of all conflicting elements. By
isolating the purely animal in human nature it succeeds in forming
inferior creations too, harmonious and even beautiful, as we are
taught by the beauty of numerous Fauns preserved from antiquity; yea,
it can, parodying itself like the merry spirit of Nature, reverse
its own Ideal, and, for instance, in the extravagance of the Silenic
figures, by light and sportive treatment appear freed again from the
pressure of matter.
But in all cases it is compelled strictly to isolate the work, in
order to make it self-consistent and a world in itself; since for
this form of Art there is no higher unity, in which the dissonance of
particulars should be melted into harmony.
Painting, on the contrary, in the very extent of its sphere, can
better measure itself with the Universe, and create with epic
profusion. In an Iliad there is room even for a Thersites; and what
does not find a place in the great epic of Nature and History!
Here the Particular scarcely counts anything by itself; the Universe
takes its place, and that, which by itself would not be beautiful,
becomes so in the harmony of the whole. If in an extensive painting,
uniting forms by the allotted space, by light, by shade, by
reflection, the highest measure of Beauty were everywhere employed,
the result would be the most unnatural monotony; for, as Winckelmann
says, the highest idea of Beauty is everywhere one and the same, and
scarcely admits of variation. The detail would be preferred to
the whole, where, as in every case in which the whole is formed by
multiplicity, the detail must be subordinate to it.
[Illustration: THE JUNGFRAU _From the Painting by Moritz von Schwind_]
In such a work, therefore, a gradation of Beauty must be observed, by
which alone the full Beauty concentrated in the focus becomes visible;
and from an exaggeration of particulars proceeds an equipoise of the
whole. Here, then, the limited and characteristic finds its place; and
theory at least should direct the painter, not so much to the narrow
space in which the entire Beauty is concentrically collected, as to
the characteristic complexity of Nature, through which alone he can
impart to an extensive work the full measure of living significance.
Thus thought, among the founders of modern art, the noble Leonardo;
thus Raphael, the master of high Beauty, who shunned not to exhibit
it in smaller measure, rather than to appear monotonous, lifeless, and
unreal--though he understood not only how to produce it, but also how
to break up uniformity by variety of expression.
For, although Character can show itself also in rest and equilibrium
of form, it is only in action that it becomes truly alive.
By character we understand a unity of several forces, operating
constantly to produce among them a certain equipoise and determinate
proportion, to which, if undisturbed, a like equipoise in the symmetry
of the forms corresponds. But if this vital Unity is to display itself
in act and operation, this can only be when the forces, excited by
some cause to rebellion, forsake their equilibrium. Every one sees
that this is the case in the Passions.
Here we are met by the well-known maxim of the theorists, which
demands that Passion should be moderated as far as possible, in its
actual outburst, that beauty of Form may not be injured. But we think
this maxim should rather be reversed, and read thus--that Passion
should be moderated by Beauty itself. For it is much to be feared that
this desired moderation too may be taken in a negative sense--whereas,
what is really requisite is to oppose to Passion a positive force. For
as Virtue consists, not in the absence of passions, but in the mastery
of the spirit over them, so Beauty is preserved, not by their removal
or abatement, but by the mastery of Beauty over them.
The forces of Passion must actually show themselves--it must be seen
that they are prepared to rise in mutiny, but are kept down by the
power of Character, and break against the forms of firmly-founded
Beauty, as the waves of a stream that just fills, but cannot overflow
its banks. Otherwise, this striving after moderation would resemble
only the method of those shallow moralists, who, the more readily
to dispose of Man, prefer to mutilate his nature; and who have so
entirely removed every positive element from actions that the
people gloat over the spectacle of great crimes, in order to refresh
themselves at last with the view of something positive.
In Nature and Art the Essence strives first after actualization,
or exhibition of itself in the Particular. Thus in each the utmost
severity is manifested at the commencement; for without bound, the
boundless could not appear; without severity, gentleness could not
exist; and if unity is to be perceptible, it can only be through
particularity, detachment, and opposition. In the beginning,
therefore, the creative spirit shows itself entirely lost in the Form,
inaccessibly shut up, and even in its grandeur still harsh. But the
more it succeeds in uniting its entire fulness in one product, the
more it gradually relaxes from its severity; and where it has fully
developed the form, so as to rest contented and self-collected in it,
it seems to become cheerful and begins to move in gentle lines. This
is the period of its fairest maturity and blossom, in which the pure
vessel has arrived at perfection; the spirit of Nature becomes free
from its bonds, and feels its relationship to the soul. By a gentle
morning blush stealing over the whole form, the coming soul announces
itself; it is not yet present, but everything prepares for its
reception by the delicate play of gentle movements; the rigid outlines
melt and temper themselves into flexibility; a lovely essence, neither
sensuous nor spiritual, but which cannot be grasped, diffuses itself
over the form, and intwines itself with every outline, every vibration
of the frame.
This essence, not to be seized, as we have already remarked, but yet
perceptible to all, is what the language of the Greeks designated by
the name _Charis_, ours as Grace.
Wherever, in a fully developed form, Grace appears, the work is
complete on the side of Nature; nothing more is wanting; all demands
are satisfied. Here, already, soul and body are in complete harmony;
Body is Form, Grace is Soul, although not Soul in itself, but the Soul
of Form, or the Soul of Nature.
Art may linger, and remain stationary at this point; for already,
on one side at least, its whole task is finished. The pure image of
Beauty arrested at this point is the Goddess of Love.
But the beauty of the Soul in itself, joined to sensuous Grace, is the
highest apotheosis of Nature.
The spirit of Nature is only in appearance opposed to the Soul;
essentially, it is the instrument of its revelation; it brings about
indeed the antagonism that exists in all things, but only that the
one essence may come forth, as the utmost benignity, and the
reconciliation of all the forces.
All other creatures are driven by the mere force of Nature, and
through it maintain their individuality; in Man alone, as the central
point, arises the soul, without which the world would be like the
natural universe without the sun. The Soul in Man, therefore, is not
the principle of individuality, but that whereby he raises himself
above all egoism, whereby he becomes capable of self-sacrifice, of
disinterested love, and (which is the highest) of the contemplation
and knowledge of the Essence of things, and thus of Art.
In him it is no longer concerned about Matter nor has it immediate
concern with it, but with the spirit only as the life of things.
Even while appearing in the body, it is yet free from the body, the
consciousness of which hovers in the soul in the most beauteous shapes
only as a light, undisturbing dream. It is no quality, no faculty, nor
anything special of the sort; it knows not, but is Science; it is
not good, but Goodness; it is not beautiful, as body even may be, but
Beauty itself.
In the first instance, it is true, in a work of art, the soul of the
artist is seen as invention in the detail, and in the total result as
the unity that hovers over the work in serene stillness. But the Soul
must be visible in objective representation, as the primeval energy
of thought, in portraitures of human beings, altogether filled by an
idea, by a noble contemplation; or as indwelling, essential Goodness.
Each of these finds its distinct expression even in the completest
repose, but a more living one where the Soul can reveal itself in
activity and antagonism; and since it is by the passions mainly that
the peace of life is interrupted, it is the generally received opinion
that the beauty of the Soul shows itself especially in its quiet
supremacy amid the storm of the passions.
But here an important distinction is to be made. For the Soul must not
be called upon to moderate those passions which are only an outbreak
of the lower spirits of Nature, nor can it be displayed in antithesis
with these; for where calm considerateness is still in contention
with them, the Soul has not yet appeared; they must be moderated by
unassisted Nature in Man, by the might of the Spirit. But there are
cases of a higher sort, in which not a single force alone, but the
intelligent Spirit itself breaks down all barriers--cases, indeed,
where even the Soul is subjected by the bond that connects it with
sensuous existence, to pain, which should be foreign to its divine
nature; where Man feels himself hard fought and attacked in the root
of his existence, not by mere powers of Nature, but by moral forces;
where innocent error hurries him into crime, and thus into misery;
where deep-felt injustice excites to rebellion the holiest feelings of
humanity.
This is the case in all situations, truly, and, in a high sense,
tragic, such as the Tragedy of the ancients brings before our eyes.
Where blindly passionate forces are aroused, the collected Spirit is
present as the guardian of Beauty; but if the Spirit itself be carried
away, as by an irresistible might, what power shall watch over
and protect sacred beauty? Or, if even the soul participate in the
struggle, how shall it save itself from pain and from desecration?
Arbitrarily to restrain the power of pain, of feeling in revolt, would
be to sin against the very meaning and aim of Art, and would betray a
want of feeling and soul in the artist himself.
Already therein, that Beauty, based on grand and firmly established
forms, has become Character, Art has provided the means of displaying
without injury to symmetry the whole intensity of Feeling. For where
Beauty rests on mighty forms, as upon immovable pillars, even a slight
change in its relations, scarcely touching the form, causes us to
infer the great force that was necessary in order to provide it. Still
more does Grace sanctify pain. It is the essential nature of Grace
that it does not know itself; but not being wilfully acquired, it also
cannot be wilfully lost. When intolerable anguish, when even madness,
sent by avenging gods, takes away consciousness and reason, Grace
stands as a protecting demon by the suffering person, and prevents it
from manifesting anything unseemly, anything discordant to Humanity,
but sees to it that, if the person falls, it falls at least a pure and
unspotted victim.
Although not yet the Soul itself, but its forebodings only, Grace
accomplishes by natural means what the Soul does by a divine power, in
transforming pain, torpor, even death itself, into Beauty.
Yet Grace, which thus maintained itself in the extremest adversity,
would be dead, without its transfiguration by the Soul. But what
expression can belong to the Soul in this situation? It delivers
itself from pain, and comes forth conquering, not conquered, by
relinquishing its connection with sensuous existence.
It is for the natural Spirit to exert its energies for the
preservation of sensuous existence; the Soul enters not into
this contest, but its presence moderates even the storms of
painfully-struggling life. Outward force can take away only outward
goods, but not reach the Soul; it can tear asunder a temporal bond,
not dissolve the eternal one of a truly divine love. Not hard and
unfeeling, nor giving up love itself, on the contrary the Soul
displays in pain this love alone, as the sentiment that outlasts
sensuous existence, and thus raises itself above the ruins of outward
life or fortune in divine glory.
It is this expression of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has
presented to us. All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible,
are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even
the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression,
through this, that Pain, transcending all expression, annihilates
itself, and Beauty, which it seemed impossible to preserve from
destruction when alive, is protected from injury by the commencing
torpor.
But what would it all be without the Soul, and how does this manifest
itself?
We see on the countenance of the mother, not grief alone for the
already prostrated flower of her children; not alone deadly anxiety
for the preservation of those yet remaining, and of the youngest
daughter, who has fled for safety to her bosom; nor resentment against
the cruel deities; least of all, as is pretended, cool defiance-all
these we see, indeed, but not these alone; for, through grief,
anxiety, and resentment streams, like a divine light, eternal love, as
that which alone remains; and in this is preserved the mother, as
one who was not, but now is a mother, and who remains united with the
beloved ones by an eternal bond.
Every one acknowledges that greatness, purity, and goodness of Soul
have also their sensuous expressions. But how is this conceivable,
unless the principle that acts in Matter be itself cognate and similar
to Soul?
For the representation of the Soul there are again gradations in
Art, according as it is joined with the merely Characteristic, or in
visible union with the Charming and Graceful.
Who perceives not already, in the tragedies of Æschylus, the presence
of that lofty morality which is predominant in the works of Sophocles?
But in the former it is enveloped in a bitter rind, and passes
less into the whole work, since the bond of sensuous Grace is still
wanting. But out of this severity, and the still rude charms of
earlier Art, could proceed the grace of Sophocles, and with it the
complete fusion of the two elements, which leaves us doubtful whether
it is more moral or sensuous Grace that enchants us in the works of
this poet.
The same is true of the plastic productions of the early and severe
style, in comparison with the gentleness of the later.
If Grace, besides being the transfiguration of the spirit of Nature,
is also the medium of connection between moral Goodness and sensuous
Appearance, it is evident how Art must tend from all points toward
it as its centre. This Beauty, which results from the perfect
interpenetration of moral Goodness and sensuous Grace, seizes and
enchants us when we meet it, with the force of a miracle. For, whilst
the spirit of Nature shows itself everywhere else independent of the
Soul, and, indeed, in a measure opposed to it, here, it seems, as if
by voluntary accord, and the inward fire of divine love, to melt into
union with it; the remembrance of the fundamental unity of the essence
of Nature and the essence of the Soul comes over the beholder with
sudden clearness--the conviction that all antagonism is only apparent,
that Love is the bond of all things, and pure Goodness the foundation
and substance of the whole Creation.
Here Art, as it were, transcends itself, and again becomes means only.
On this summit sensuous Grace becomes in turn only the husk and body
of a higher life; what was before a whole is treated as a part, and
the highest relation of Art and Nature is reached in this--that it
makes Nature the medium of manifesting the soul which it contains.
But though in this blossoming of Art, as in the blossoming of the
vegetable kingdom, all the previous stages are repeated, yet, on the
other hand, we may see in what various directions Art can proceed from
this centre. Especially does the difference in nature of the two
forms of Plastic Art here show itself most strongly. For Sculpture,
representing its ideas by corporeal things, seems to reach its highest
point in the complete equilibrium of Soul and Matter--if it give a
preponderance to the latter it sinks below its own idea--but it seems
altogether impossible for it to elevate the Soul at the expense of
Matter, since it must thereby transcend itself. The perfect sculptor
indeed, as Winckelmann remarks apropos of the Belvedere Apollo, will
use no more material than is needful to accomplish his spiritual
purpose; but also, on the other hand, he will put into the Soul no
more energy than is at the same time expressed in the material; for
precisely upon this, fully to embody the spiritual, depends his
art. Sculpture, therefore, can reach its true summit only in the
representation of those natures in whose constitution it is implied
that they actually embody all that is contained in their Idea or Soul;
thus only in divine natures. So that Sculpture, even if no Mythology
had preceded it, would of itself have come upon gods, and have
invented such if it found none.
Moreover as the Spirit, on this lower platform, has again the same
relation to Matter that we have ascribed to the Soul (being the
principle of activity and motion, as Matter is that of rest and
inaction), the law that regulates Expression and Passion must be a
fundamental principle of its nature.
But this law must be applicable not only to the lower passions, but
also equally to those higher and godlike passions, if it is permitted
so to call them, by which the Soul is affected in rapture, in
devotion, in adoration. Hence, since from these passions the gods
alone are exempt, Sculpture is inclined from this side also to the
imaging of divine natures.
The nature of Painting, however, seems to differ entirely from that of
Sculpture. For the former represents objects, not like the latter, by
corporeal things, but by light and color, through a medium therefore
itself incorporeal and in a measure spiritual. Painting, moreover,
gives out its productions nowise as the things themselves, but
expressly as pictures. From its very nature therefore it does not lay
as much stress on the material as Sculpture, and seems indeed for
this reason, while exalting the material above the spirit, to degrade
itself more than Sculpture in a like case; on the other hand to be so
much more justified in giving a clear preponderance to the Soul.
Where it aims at the highest it will indeed ennoble the passions by
Character, or moderate them by Grace, or manifest in them the power of
the Soul: but on the other hand it is precisely those higher passions,
depending on the relationship of the Soul with a Supreme Being, that
are entirely suited to the nature of Painting. Indeed, while Sculpture
maintains an exact balance between the force whereby a thing exists
outwardly and acts in Nature and that by virtue of which it lives
inwardly and as Soul, and excludes mere suffering even from Matter,
Painting may soften in favor of the Soul the characteristicness of the
force and activity in Matter, and transform it into resignation
and endurance, making it apparent that Man becomes more generally
susceptible to the inspirations of the Soul, and to higher influences
in general.
This diametrical difference explains of itself not only the necessary
predominance of Sculpture in the ancient, and of Painting in the
modern world (since in the former the tone of mind was thoroughly
plastic, whereas the latter makes even the Soul the passive instrument
of higher revelations); but this also is evident--that it is
not enough to strive after the Plastic in form and manner of
representation, but that it is requisite, before all, to think and to
feel plastically, that is, antiquely.
And as the deviation of Sculpture into the picturesque is destructive
to Art, so the narrowing down of Painting to the conditions and forms
belonging to Sculpture is an arbitrarily imposed limitation. For while
Sculpture, like gravitation, acts toward one point, it is permitted to
Painting, as to light, to fill all space with its creative energy.
This unlimited universality of Painting is demonstrated by History
itself, and by the examples of the greatest masters, who, without
injury to the essential character of their art, have developed to
perfection each particular stage by itself, so that we can find also
in the history of Art the same sequence that may be pointed out in its
nature--not indeed in exact order of time, but yet substantially. For
thus is represented in Michelangelo the oldest and mightiest epoch of
liberated Art, that in which it displays its yet uncontrolled strength
in gigantic progeny; as in the fables of the symbolic Fore-world, the
Earth, after the embrace of Uranus, brought forth at first Titans and
heaven-storming giants before the mild reign of the serene gods began.
Thus the painting of the Last Judgment, with which, as the sum of his
art, that giant spirit filled the Sistine Chapel, seems to remind
us more of the first ages of the Earth and its products, than of
its last. Attracted toward the most hidden abysses of organic,
particularly of the human form, he shuns not the Terrible; nay,
he seeks it purposely, and startles it from its repose in the dark
workshops of Nature. Want of delicacy, grace, pleasingness, he
balances by the extremest energy; and if he excites horror by his
representations, it is the terror that, according to fable, the
ancient god Pan spreads around him when he suddenly appears in the
assemblies of men.
It is the method of Nature to produce the extraordinary by isolation
and the exclusion of opposed qualities. Thus, it was necessary that,
in Michelangelo, earnestness and the deep significant energy of Nature
should prevail, rather than a sense of the grace and sensibility that
belong to the Soul, in order to display the extreme of pure plastic
force in the painting of modern times.
After the earlier violence and the vehement impulse of birth is
assuaged, the spirit of Nature is transfigured into Soul, and Grace is
born. This point Art reached, after Leonardo da Vinci, in Correggio,
in whose works the sensuous Soul is the active principle of Beauty.
* * * * *
As the modern fable of Psyche closes the circle of the old mythology;
so Painting, by giving a preponderance to the Soul, attained a new,
though not a higher step of Art.
This Guido Reni strove after, and became the proper painter of the
Soul. Such seems to us to be the necessary interpretation of his whole
endeavor, often uncertain, and, in many of his works, losing itself in
the vague.
This is shown, as, perhaps, in few of his other pictures, in the
masterpiece that is offered to the admiration of all in the great
collection of our king.
In the figure of the heavenward-ascending Virgin, all harshness and
sternness are effaced, even to the last trace; and, indeed, does not
Painting itself seem in it to soar upward, transfigured on its own
pinions, as the liberated Psyche delivered from the severity of Form?
Here nothing outward remains, with separate natural force; everything
expresses receptivity and still endurance, even the perishable flesh,
the character of which the Italian language designates by the term
_morbidezza_, altogether unlike that with which Raphael invests the
descending Queen of Heaven, as she appears to the adoring pope and a
saint.
Though the remark be well-founded, that the original of Guido's female
heads is the Niobe of antiquity, yet the ground of this similarity is
surely no mere intentional imitation; perhaps a like aim led to like
means.
As the Florentine Niobe is an extreme in Sculpture, and the
representation in it of the Soul, so this well-known picture is
an extreme in Painting, which here ventures to lay aside even the
requisite of shade and the obscure, and to work almost with pure
Light.
Even though it might be permitted to Painting, from its peculiar
nature, to give a distinct preponderance to the Soul, yet theory and
instruction will do best constantly to aim at that original Centre,
whence alone Art may be produced ever anew; whereas, at the stage last
mentioned, it must necessarily stand still, or degenerate into cramped
mannerism. For even that higher passion is opposed to the idea of
having reached the acme of energy, whose image and reflex Art is
called upon to display.
A right intelligence will ever enjoy seeing a creature worthily, and,
as far as possible, also individually, represented; yea, Deity itself
would look down with pleasure on a being that, gifted with a pure
soul, should stoutly assert the dignity of its nature outwardly also,
and by its sensually efficient existence.
We have seen how the work of Art, springing up out of the depths of
Nature, begins with determinateness and limitation, unfolds its inward
plenitude and infinity, is finally transfigured in Grace, and at
last attains to Soul. But we can conceive only in detail what, in the
creative act of mature Art, is but one operation. No theory and no
rules can give this spiritual, creative power. It is the pure gift of
Nature, which here, for the second time, makes a close; for, having
fully actualized herself, she invests the creature with her creative
energy. But as, in the grand progress of Art, these different stages
appeared successively, until, at the highest, all joined in one; so
also, in particulars, sound culture can spring up only where it has
unfolded itself regularly from the germ and root to the blossom.
The requirement that Art, like everything living, should commence from
the first rudiments, and, to renew its youth, constantly return
to them, may seem a hard doctrine to an age that has so often
been assured that it has only to take from works of Art already in
existence the most consummate Beauty, and thus, as at a step, to reach
the final goal. Have we not already the Excellent, the Perfect? How
then should we return to the rudimentary and unformed?
Had the great founders of modern Art thought thus, we should never
have seen their miracles. Before them also stood the creations of the
ancients, round statues and works in relief, which they might have
transferred immediately to their canvas. But such an appropriation of
a Beauty not self-won, and therefore unintelligible, would not satisfy
an artistic instinct that aimed throughout at the fundamental, and
from which the Beautiful was again to create itself with free original
energy. They were not afraid, therefore, to appear simple, artless,
dry, beside those exalted ancients; nor to cherish Art for a long time
in the undistinguished bud, until the period of Grace had arrived.
Whence comes it that we still look upon these works of the older
masters, from Giotto to the teacher of Raphael, with a sort of
reverence, indeed with a certain predilection, if not that the
faithfulness of their endeavor, and the grand earnestness of their
serene voluntary limitation, compel our respect and admiration.
The same relation that they held to the ancients, the present
generation holds to them. Their time and ours are joined by no living
transmission, no link of continuous, organic growth; we must reproduce
Art in the way they did, but with energy of our own, in order to be
like them.
Even that Indian-summer of Art, at the end of the sixteenth and the
beginning of the seventeenth centuries, could call forth only a few
new blossoms on the old stem, but no productive germs, still less
plant a new tree of Art. But to set aside the works of perfected
Art, and to seek out its scanty and simple beginnings, as some have
desired, would be a new and perhaps greater mistake; it would be no
real return to the fundamental; simplicity would be affectation, and
grow into hypocritical show.
But what prospect does the present time offer for an Art springing
from a vigorous germ, and growing up from the root? For it is in a
great measure dependent on the character of its time; and who
would promise the approbation of the present time to such earnest
beginnings, when Art, on the one hand, scarcely obtains equal
consideration with other instruments of prodigal luxury, and, on the
other, artists and amateurs, with entire want of ability to grasp
Nature, praise and demand the Ideal?
Art springs only from that powerful striving of the inmost powers of
the heart and the spirit, which we call Inspiration. Everything that
from difficult or small beginnings has grown up to great power and
height, owes its growth to Inspiration. Thus spring empires and
states, thus arts and sciences. But it is not the power of the
individual that accomplishes this, but the Spirit alone, that diffuses
itself over all. For Art especially is dependent on the tone of the
public mind, as the more delicate plants on atmosphere and weather; it
needs a general enthusiasm for Sublimity and Beauty, like that which,
in the time of the Medici, as a warm breath of spring, called forth at
once and together all those great spirits.
* * * * *
It is only when the public life is actuated by the same forces through
whose energy Art is elevated, that the latter can derive any advantage
from it; for Art cannot, without giving up the nobility of its nature,
aim at anything outward.
Art and Science can move only on their own axes; the artist, like
every spiritual laborer, can follow only the law that God and Nature
have written in his heart. None can help him--he must help himself;
nor can he be outwardly rewarded, since anything that he should
produce for the sake of aught out of itself, would thereby become a
nullity; hence, too, no one can direct him, nor prescribe the path
he is to tread. Is he to be pitied if he have to contend against his
time, he is deserving of contempt if he truckle to it. But how
should it be even possible for him to do this? Without great general
enthusiasm there are only sects--no public opinion; not an established
taste, not the great ideas of a whole people, but the voices of a few
arbitrarily-appointed judges, determine as to merit; and Art, which
in its elevation is self-sufficing, courts favor, and serves where it
should rule.
To different ages are given different inspirations. Can we expect none
for this age, since the new world now forming itself, as it exists in
part already outwardly, in part inwardly and in the hearts of men, can
no longer be measured by any standard of previous opinion, and since
everything, on the contrary, loudly demands higher standards and an
entire renovation?
Should not the sense to which Nature and History have more livingly
unfolded themselves, restore to Art also its great arguments? The
attempt to draw sparks from the ashes of the Past, and fan them again
into universal flame, is a vain endeavor. Only a revolution in the
ideas themselves is able to raise Art from its exhaustion; only new
Knowledge, new Faith, can inspire it for the work by which it can
display, in a renewed life, a splendor like the past.
An Art in all respects the same as that of foregoing centuries, will
never return; for Nature never repeats herself. Such a Raphael will
never be again, but another, who shall have reached in an equally
original manner the summit of Art. Only let the fundamental conditions
be fulfilled, and renewed Art will show, like that which preceded
it, in its first works, its aim and intent. In the production of the
distinctly characteristic, if it proceed from a fresh original energy,
Grace is already present, even though hidden, and in both the advent
of the Soul already determined. Works produced in this manner, even in
their rudimentary imperfection, are necessary and eternal. * * *
LATER GERMAN ROMANTICISM
By George H. Danton, PH.D
Professor of German, Butler College
The group of later Romanticists is distinguished from the earlier
pioneers by less emphasis on speculative philosophy, by greater
spontaneity, and by more creative ability. The later school was less
interested in questions primarily esthetic and was more democratic.
Both groups were enemies of the aristocratic Enlightenment of the
eighteenth century; but where the earlier group worked with the
Kantian understanding and with a supersensuous philosophy, the younger
men lived in the world and were of it; they used the people to carry
on their propaganda. Thus, though later Romanticism contains nearly
all the ideas of earlier Romanticism, it displays in addition also,
political, national, and social tendencies which were in the main
foreign to the earlier writers.
There was in the later group a deeper sense of religion and a firmer
belief in the spiritual foundations of experience than is shown by
their predecessors, though all Romanticism tried to penetrate the
mysteries of life and all Romanticists were seers as well as
prophets. In the later school, too, there appears a development of the
nature-sense far beyond anything shown in the first group. Indeed,
the Schlegels may be said to have been without a sense for nature; in
Tieck there is a great discrepancy between the man, his beliefs,
and his practise, and Novalis' nature-feeling is not attached to
any specific place. But Brentano loves the Rhine, and Eichendorff's
landscape is genuinely Silesian. Caroline and Dorothea know nothing of
the mood which makes Bettina throw herself prone in the grass to watch
an insect crawl over her hand.
A keener appreciation of natural beauty led to a study of natural
science; thence it was but a step to the "night-sides" of nature;
and spiritism, mesmerism, occultism, and abnormal psychology fill the
minds of such men as the Romantic philosopher Schubert, and of the
physicians Carus and Passavant. Justinus Kerner wrote of the Seeress
of Prevorst, and Clemens Brentano watched for years at the bedside
of a stigmatized nun. On the other hand, from nature comes a love for
home and country, and this love serves as a bridge to the patriotism
which was the vital force in the Wars of Liberation and which, by
well-marked gradations, destroyed the cosmopolitanism engendered by
the French Revolution. Art went hand in hand with nature; the
wild, weird landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, fascinating and
specifically German, express the Romantic spirit fully as well as the
delicate, spiritual, and thoroughly sane fancies of Philip Otto Runge,
the artist of early Romanticism.
As the earlier men centred in Jena, so the later Romanticists
flourished in Heidelberg, that city which Eichendorff called "itself
a magnificent Romanticism." The earlier group was largely North German
and brought with it clear perception and a certain power of analysis,
an ability to dissect and to reason. With the Heidelberg group the
South begins to play a larger part, though there were a number of
North Germans in it. The richer fancy, the longer literary tradition,
now add color to their productions. It is significant, too, that
though "castle Romanticism" does not die out, a new note is struck
with the celebration of the Rhine in song, story, and legend. The
river begins with Romantic tradition and in a Romantic _milieu_, but
rises to political significance as "Germany's stream and not Germany's
boundary." The southward tendency of the movement reached its climax
when its centre shifted to Munich, with a culture-loving king, an
Academy of Sciences and a new University. Munich was fortunately not
destined to become like Vienna, that other South German city, "a Capua
of the spirit."
Though certain members of the later Romantic group were closely
associated with each other in a way that was unknown to the older set,
Arnim and Savigny having each married a sister of Brentano, there was
less real solidarity among them than in their forerunners. By no means
all the men treated within the confines of the present article had the
close personal association which, when combined with intellectual or
literary activity, goes by the rather loose name of a "school." The
first Romanticists were held together by a common effort to formulate
or to attain a speculative philosophy. In the second group, there was
a decentralizing, catholicizing tendency, and, above all, a greater
individual creative ability. It was not merely the chance difference
of external fortunes that kept them apart, though they never held
together after the death of Brentano's wife in 1806, but that each
projected his individuality into his literary work rather than into a
common polemic ideal. The path-finding and discovery had already been
done; in the quieter backwater it was possible to develop well-rounded
works of real esthetic value.
Very significant of the differences between the schools is their
journalistic activity. The ideal of the first Romanticists was to work
without collaboration; but the very prospectus of Arnim's _Journal for
Hermits_ is signed by a company of editors. The early journals were
turned to the study of German literature through a renunciation of
the present; the later Germanic studies arose from a high idealism and
from a sincere desire to awaken the present to new national activity.
When, later in life, Görres remarked of these journals that their
collaborators felt as if they were accompanying the Holy Roman Empire
to its grave, he was thinking of the year in which the most important
of them flourished, 1808. In this, Germany's darkest period, Kleist's
Phoebus, so cordially hated by many, and Arnim's _Journal for Hermits_
had their brief but influential career.
Such a journal as the _Athenaeum_, with its over-emphasis on the
esthetic, with its fighting spirit, its excoriating, inexorable wit,
its constructive and destructive criticism, its complete and total
silence on Schiller, would have been an impossibility in the later
period. The feeling for and thinking in Fragments, as practised by
Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, was foreign to the new school. They
had no illusions that such thinking would become the daily custom
of the people; they kept their eyes open to that which went on about
them, and though they no more dared than the earlier group to work
directly upon the political conditions of the day as did Görres later
(1814) in his _Rheinischer Merkur_, they attempted indirectly to
react on the broad mass by branching out into religion and other
folk-interests as the earlier school never cared to do. Perhaps this
is an excuse for the shallowness of some of the product, especially of
the fiction; at any rate, the attempt at dissemination was not without
its success.
The external link connecting the two schools as well as the Romantic
groups in general and the object of their star-worship, Goethe, was
Clemens Maria Brentano (1778-1842), in many ways the most typical
Romantic figure of either school. Brentano's grandmother, Sophie La
Roche, had been the friend of Wieland; his mother, Maximiliane,
played a not unimportant rôle in the life of the young Goethe and
is immortalized in the latter part of _Werther_. Maximiliane married
Brentano, an Italian from the Como region, and Clemens was the third
child of this loveless union. Brentano's early life was not happy; he
was destined for a business career but was a failure in it, and then
studied at various universities but with no great application or
success. From 1797-1800 he was at Jena, where he succeeded in making
himself hated by the Schlegels in spite of his defense of them in
his satirical play, _Gustav Wasa_ (1800). This play, in the manner of
Tieck's _Puss in Boots_, attempts to ridicule Kotzebue. The method
is the same as Tieck's: there is the play within the play, the gagged
officer (to take the place of the critic Böttger), the puns, of which,
perhaps, the one on Lucinde _(Lux inde)_ is the best, and which,
as often in Brentano, go beyond and surpass Tieck. Romantic irony
flourishes: the whole world of the theatre, the author, the very
lights, the building, the working day and the musical instruments in
the orchestra are dramatized in turn. The dialogue of the latter far
more intimately suggests their quality than does the speech of
the flutes in Tieck, where their spirit is cerulean blue. _Wasa_,
unfortunately, runs off into dull allegory, and this work is not to be
compared with August von Schlegel's _Gate of Honor_ as a satire on the
same subject.
Brentano's _Godwi_ (1801), the sub-title of which, "An Unmanageable
Novel by Maria," shows its character, is a far better production. It
has the strong, full-blooded, passionate love of life characteristic
of its author, "the many-souled" Brentano, whose Romantic irony
resulted from his being ashamed of his sentimentality, and whose
hatred of philistinism was caused by his fear of his own latent
tendency toward that point of view. The plot of _Godwi_ runs wild, but
the satire and the interspersed lyrics make it interesting reading.
Romantic irony can go no farther than in this book, in which the
author's own death-bed scene is portrayed and in which the preceding
parts of the work are referred to by page and line--"This is the pond
into which I fall on page so and so."
If Brentano's _Rosary_ cycle (1809) is somewhat unpleasantly
superhuman, and if, at times, he mixes sex and religion like a mystic
of the Middle Ages or a Spaniard of the Counter Reformation, he rises
to wonderful lyric heights when he touches his own experiences, or
when he expresses the note of the people. His use of the supernatural,
of the subconscious mood, gives rise to such poems as _The Lore-Lay_,
the legend of which was actually invented by Brentano. Like all
Romanticists, Brentano was a poet of incomplete works, of moods
which abandoned him before the artistic perfection of his effort was
reached; but his suggestive touches, and, above all, his constant use
of the refrain in all phases and _genres_, especially to emphasize
and summarize his musical consciousness, are a striking proof of the
French adage, "Quand le coeur chante, c'est toujours un refrain."
Brentano surrenders himself passionately to his mood. His surrender
and his distorting irony, like Heine's, arise from his desire to
assimilate all of the outside world; it explains, in part, the
Romantic desire to mediate, to translate, to bridge the cleft between
oneself and the world. In part, too, it explains the desire for
musical imitation so apparent in both Tieck and Brentano. It is an
attempt to express in terms of one sense the ideas or apperceptions
of another. But where Tieck falls into meaningless jingle, Brentano
succeeds, not merely in suggesting but in producing the effect, as in
his _Merry Musicians_ (1803), or in bringing about its latent mood,
as in his _Spinner's Song_ or in his version of the old
folk-epithalamium, "Come out, come out, thou lovely, lovely bride."
Brentano's prose tales vary in quality from the over-allegorized
latter part of _The Fairy Tale of the Rhine and the Miller Radlauf_
(1816) to the simple and homely _Kasper and Annie_ (1817), with its
elemental clash of soldiers and citizens. Through many of the tales
there runs a note of satire and of symbolism, but the fancy is
exuberant and the interest well maintained. Brentano's discovery
of the Rhine as an object of poetry and veneration is completely
summarized in _Radlauf_, where the Rhine lyrics are often of wonderful
beauty and definiteness and the river becomes a benevolent _deus ex
machina_, who--significantly--in dreams, guides and aids the simple,
honest miller in his search for a bride.
Later in life, Brentano returned to the Roman Church into which he
had been baptized as a child, and gradually withdrew from literary
activity. Long before his death in 1842, he had renounced his earlier
life as wicked and abhorrent, and had given himself over entirely to
the Church. But his career with its constant wanderings, its lack
of permanency of occupation, of family ties, and of a real home,
his inability to grow old, his inner unreality, his excessive
productivity-in short, all that is incomplete, over-stimulated,
destructive of self, make him the most typical figure of the later
Romantic group.
Ludwig Achim von Arnim (1781-1831) is by no means so bizarre a figure.
Born in Berlin of a noble family, he inherited a peculiar
patriotism and his love of culture, and developed these without
the eccentricities which characterized his brother-in-law. The main
influences of his early years were Goethe and Jena, but, as a direct
inspiration, Tieck must also be mentioned. Arnim's early works lie
largely in the field of natural science, especially in physics. He had
little of Brentano's lyric gift; indeed, his poems, where not wooden,
are often merely reminiscent. They show, too, in an unusual degree,
the ability to adapt himself to another's mood and assimilate it--that
which the Germans call "Nachempfinden," a quality which stood him in
excellent stead in his work on _The Boy's Magic Horn_.
The drama _Halle and Jerusalem_ (1810) is an amalgamation of the story
of Cardenio and Celinde used by Gryphius and Immermann, with the story
of the Wandering Jew. The first four acts take place in Halle where
Cardenio is a teacher and where he is living in incestuous relation
with Olympia. He is a Faust-nature and his father is Ahasuerus.
The fifth act is taken up with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem where the
romantic fates of the characters are decided. The play abounds in
contemporary satire and, as in all of Arnim's work, there is distinct
emphasis on action, the goal of human endeavor.
Arnim's prose is better than his verse. Soon, in _The Guardians of
the Crown_ (1817; volume 2 unfinished and published in his literary
remains, 1854), he strikes an individual note. This novel is one
of the best products of German Romanticism. The Guardians are a
mysterious secret organization who guard the imperial crown in a fairy
castle and are favorable to the ancient house of Hohenstaufen but
inimical to the ruling Habsburgs. The basis is the newly awakening
ideal of German unity but Arnim fails to express this clearly, and
the concluding motif, that Germany's crown is to be spiritually won,
resolves the whole into a frosty allegory. The progress of the story
is, however, extremely interesting; the whole spacious and varied
scene of medieval life is there, and as Tieck and Wackenroder
discovered Nuremberg, and Brentano the Rhine, so Arnim may be said to
have shown in its full activity the Ghibelline city of Waiblingen. It
is, to be sure, a Romantic Waiblingen, and not the real city, as Arnim
himself was afterward forced to admit with some disappointment when he
actually saw it. But as Arnim portrays it, it rises to typical value
without losing any of its poetic individuality. It is the city of the
Hohenstaufens, the last stand of medievalism against the encroachment
of a new civilization. The echoes from Gotz von Berlichingen are at
once apparent to the reader. But Arnim's city of the sixteenth century
does not look backward only; the conflicts in it point forward also.
Its abbess is not the traditional pious, fat old lady, but a tall,
thin, practical and active woman. Its Faust is a figure of aggressive
naturalism, a charlatan and quack who practises blood-transfusion on
the hero and who lies drunk in a pig-sty--a scene which shows Arnim's
power of drastic contrast at its best. The hero, Berthold, does
not sit back and wait for the crown to come to him, but with money
mysteriously given him builds a cloth-mill on the site of his
ancestral palace and becomes the mayor of the city. How different a
picture from the hazy cities of Novalis' _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_!
It is a part of the new spirit in Romanticism to point the way for the
people of Germany to go forward--to leave mysticism and dreams, and to
grapple with the life around them.
A similar impulse toward popularization actuated Arnim and Brentano
in their joint work, _The Boy's Magic Horn_ (1806-8). This is the
achievement upon which their greatest fame will always rest. It is
one of the best collections of folk-songs and popular ballads in any
language, and has been of the greatest influence upon Germany. There
was no desire on the part of the editors to write a learned treatise;
they simply wished to gather together and record the folk-songs of the
Fatherland before they were lost forever. In Arnim's own words: "The
richness of this our national song cannot fail to attract universal
attention; it will surprise many; it will supplement many an effort of
our own times, or will render such effort needless. We expect a great
deal from the joyous happy life in these songs--a manifold, full tone
in poetry, an echo of very definite ideas, or an impulse to arouse
many a half-forgotten youthful memory. These poems will not only be
read, they will be remembered and sung. They embrace in their content,
perhaps the greatest portion of German poetry. They will thus set free
many an indefinite longing--a something which is not satisfied by much
re-reading."
Goethe greeted the new undertaking with enthusiasm and urged the
editors to "keep their poetic archives clean, strict, and in good
order." He, too, urged that "this book should be in every house where
joyful humans dwell, by the window, under the mirror, or where song
book and cook book lie. There it should remain, ready to be opened,
and there something should be found for every varying mood." While
this fate has not been granted the work, it has grown deservedly
popular. Philological criticism has caviled at the free hand which
Arnim, especially, used in remolding the songs, but the editors are
freed of any possible charge of intellectual dishonesty toward reader
and source in that their object was to present artistic unities and
not material for further study and dissection.
A folk-song is a song which has become a part of the lyric
consciousness of the people; often the singers do not know that
what they are singing has a literary origin--they have thoroughly
assimilated it. In the best sense of the term, the songs of _The Boy's
Magic Horn_ are folk-songs. They are both narrative and dramatic as
well as pure lyric in form, and are simple, powerful, and direct in
expression. They treat all phases of German life of the past, from a
crude version of the _Lay of Hildebrant_ to the riddles, lullabies,
and counting-out rhymes of children. Pictures of the moral and social
life of peasant Germany are followed by poems of nature and of the
supernatural. Tragedies vary with humorous skits, extravagant and
mocking, and the collection is enlivened with many flyting poems
about tailors--a favorite butt of the peasant past. Ballads of popular
origin and ballads with an added sentimental touch, such as the famous
Strassburg poem with the added Alpine horn motif, are found here.
Delicate, haunting rhymes alternate with crude assonances, and
occasionally one meets with banalities; but, as a whole, the
collection is of surprising merit. It is a product of the Romantic
return to the past, but is filled with a poetic outlook toward the
future. Of the work as a whole Heine says, "I cannot praise the book
enough. It contains the most graceful flowers of the German spirit,
and he who wishes to know the German people at their best, let him
read these folk-songs. * * * In these songs one feels the heart-beat
of the German folk. It is a revelation of all melancholy cheerfulness,
all their foolish reason. Here German anger beats its drum, here is
the pipe of German scorn, the kiss of German love."
The part which the Romantic mood played in the Wars of Liberation is
definite and well-recognized. The soldier, Gneisenau, felt that the
politics of the future lay in the poetry of the day, and Adam Muller
proudly proclaimed poetry to be a war-power: The Romantic longing
for the distance, for love, when directed to the remote past of
the Fatherland, not only yielded a new life in art and religion but
induced a tremendous patriotism as well. The cosmopolitan temper which
caused Lessing to say that love of country was an unknown feeling to
him, gave way before an intenser nationalism. The earlier Romanticists
began it; in the later group it took more specific form and became
a propaganda. It was also precipitated in verse and prose. The spark
came from Fichte, who was gradually led to see in the destiny of
the German people a large cultural fact. Fichte, like a true German,
emphasized education as the means of progress: Arnim grasped the
problem from another side; he felt himself autochthonous, and
consciously set out to make his connection with the soil react on
those sprung from the soil. In him, as well as in Fichte, dawns the
ideal of the German people as an entity, as a nation.
There are three poets whose main value lies in the appeal they made to
the belligerent spirit of the day. They represent three phases of the
German character. Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860), the eldest of the
group, is the pamphleteer, the politician, and the teacher, as well
as the poet. He is the hard-headed, earnest intellectual whose lyric
poetry, whatever its esthetic weaknesses, arouses to action by its
deadly insistence on an idea, on hatred of the French, on salvation by
the sword. Arndt is all virility and fire.
The life of Theodor Körner (1791-1813), the son of Schiller's intimate
friend, shows that mixture of idealism and practicality for which the
Germans are becoming more and more noted. Körner was aroused from his
poetic diletantism by the alarms of war. He enlisted in the famous
Lützow corps and died a soldier's death, thus becoming the symbol of
all that was ideal for the patriotic youth of his day, the hero and
the poet, the man of "Lyre and Sword." His patriotic poems, often
composed on the very field of battle, were sung by the soldiers to the
roll of cannon and the beat of drum. The trace of Schiller's rhetoric
in Körner's poems adds to their effectiveness, spurring to action and
firing young minds to patriotic emulation of high ideals. Like Arndt's
lyrics, Körner's poems are actual documents in the struggle for
liberty-verses which affected men.
The German mystic trait, the touch of the religious, marks the poetry
of Max Schenkendorf (1783-1817). His was a quieter nature, which
loved the Fatherland, its language, its romantic scenes and past.
Characteristic also is his veneration for Queen Luise, whose beauty,
tenderness, and fortitude had endeared her to the people as well as to
the poets.
Though every Romantic poet took some stand on the questions of
the day, the most distinctly lyric of them, Joseph von Eichendorff
(1788-1857), was not of a military temperament. Even he, however,
followed the King of Prussia's call to arms but, significantly enough
for "the last Knight of Romanticism," as he was called, arrived a day
too late on the field of Waterloo. The somewhat fanciful title by no
means indicates a jouster at windmills; it implies, rather, that
in Eichendorff there were gathered for the last time with all their
poetic brilliancy, the declining rays of the Romantic movement. After
him, the enthusiasm is in its decline or changes to forms which lie
outside the confines of the Romantic spirit.
Eichendorff is a thorough _pleinairiste_, filled with the atmosphere
of his native Silesia and, in some measure, hardly intelligible apart
from its landscape. His birth-place, the castle of Lubowitz, near
Ratibor, rising high on a hill in full sight of the Oder, is the
ultimate background of all his nature-poetry. Here must be localized
the ever-recurring hill and valley, wood, nightingale, and castle.
Here, too, he heard the rustling of the forest leaves and the
splashing of the fountain; here he was grounded in the strong
and pious, if somewhat narrow, Catholicism of his race. It was a
Catholicism, however, which was genuinely Romantic in that it sought
comfort in sorrow directly from nature, a tendency which gives rise
to some of the best and most heartfelt religious poetry in German
literature. A fine example of this is to be found in Eichendorff's
beautiful poems on the death of his child. It is interesting to see
how, in this spiritual poetry, there is a constant melting of nature
into religion, a dissolving of the Romantic atmosphere, of that
youthful fervor which Eichendorff never really outgrew but continued
to draw upon for inspiration for all his later work, into a broad,
deep, manly piety.
Eichendorff's poetry began with Tieckian notes; it was influenced by
Brentano, and, unfortunately, was colored by the productions of Count
Otto von Löben (1786-1825), a pseudo-Romanticist of less than
mediocre ability. But Eichendorff's individuality, with its constant
accentuation of the acoustic, soon made itself felt and brought into
German poetry what Tieck had tried for and failed in--an effect of
perfect musical synthesis. The melody of the verse receives a peculiar
lilt by frequent changes in metre between stanzas or in the midst of
the stanza, and is thus saved from monotony. Were its metrical harmony
tiring in any way, it could not have been set to music with such
surprising success. As it is, Eichendorff's poetry has become a
permanent part of the musical life of the nation. _The Broken
Ring_ has passed into a folk-song, and _"O valleys wide!"_ with
Mendelssohn's music is a popular choral of deep religious import.
Yet Eichendorff does not attract either by the variety of his themes
or of his rhymes. It is his very repetitions which so endear him
to the popular heart. His is not passionate poetry, nor does it
subjectively portray the soul-life of its author. In fact, it is saved
from monotony of content at times only by its extreme honesty and
its lovable simplicity. There is none of Goethe's power of suggesting
landscape in a few touches, none of Goethe's logic of description,
none of Goethe's clear inner objectivity, but a certain haze lies over
Eichendorff's landscapes--the haze of a lyric Corot; at the same time,
this landscape has the power of suggestion to the German mind. Paul
Heyse, himself a poet, makes one of his characters say, "I have always
carried Eichendorff Is book of songs with me on my travels. Whenever a
feeling of strangeness comes over me in the variegated days, or I feel
a longing for home, I turn its leaves and am at home again. None of
our poets has the same magic reminiscence of home which captures our
hearts with such touching monotony, with so few pictures and notes.
* * * He is always new, as the voices of Nature itself, and never
oppresses, but rather lulls one to sweet dreams as if a mother were
singing her child to sleep."
The one novel of Eichendorff which has lived, _From the Life of
a Good-for-nothing_ (1826), is a last Romantic shoot of Friedrich
Schlegel's doctrine of divine laziness--a delightful story, abounding
in those elements which perennially endear Romanticism to the young
heart, for it is full of nature and love and fortunate happenings.
What could be more charming than the spirit in which the hero throws
away the vegetables in his garden and puts in flowers? What more naïve
than his spyings, his fiddlings? The strength of the story lies in the
fact that while its head is in the clouds, its feet are on the ground.
There is no sentimentalizing, no breaking down of class distinctions;
the good-for-nothing marries his lady-love, but she is of his own
rank. The pseudo-Romanticism of modern novels is avoided; the
hero neither wins a kingdom nor is he the long-lost heir of some
potentate--he remains just what he was, a lovable good-for-nothing.
The weather-eye on probability is what in later times has helped the
Romanticists to slip so easily into Realism--and to reactionary views.
Of all the great mass of material left by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
(1777-1843), only a lyric or two and the fairy tale _Undine_ have any
value for the present day. Fouqué represents the talent which develops
in the glare of the world, is popular for a decade, but soon withers
when the sun is set. His relations to Romanticism are largely
external; he frequented the salons of Rachel Levin and Henrietta Herz
in Berlin, was aided by August von Schlegel, and was praised by
Jean Paul; but in his heart he was not inspired by any of the deeper
longings that characterize the true Romantic spirit. Even though he is
to be credited with the first modern dramatization of the Nibelungen
story, _The Hero of the North_ (1810), and though he took subjects
from the Germanic past and from the chivalric days, he brought no new
life to his rehabilitations. Fouqué was too productive, too facile,
too external, too indifferent to psychological motivation to be real.
He diluted Romanticism and sentimentalized it. In him patriotism
becomes chauvinism; love, philandering; and his age of chivalry, a
thinly veiled and sentimental picture of his own times. The strength
and the indigenousness of Arnim are gone, and that power to throw a
Romantic glamor over life which Tieck and Hoffmann had, is lacking.
Only in his charming fairy-tale, _Undine_ (1811), does Fouqué rise
above his _milieu. Undine_, the source of which, according to Fouqué
himself, is to be found in a work of Paracelsus on supernatural
beings, remains one of the best creations of the Romantic school and,
like Eichendorff's novel, has become international, not only in
its original form but in the opera by Lortzing (first performance,
Hamburg, 1845). The value of the story lies in the author's power
to make the reader believe in Undine, the water sprite, and in
the presentation of a new nature-mythology. All Romanticists have
consciously or unconsciously attempted to satisfy Friedrich Schlegel's
demand for anew mythology: Fouqué's earth, air, and water spirits
people the elements with graceful forms from the world of nature; the
nymph Undine in the form of a flowing stream embraces even in death
the grave of her lover.
Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862) was not fundamentally a Romantic
personality. He is called "the classicist of Romanticism," and
with justice. The term shows that he is felt to have something of
completion, of inner perfection, of harmony of form and content which
was lacking in the truer Romanticists. Uhland was without their early
cosmopolitanism. Political life as manifested in him was, first of
all, Suabian--for Uhland was a Suabian and most intimately associated
with that section of Germany. He was actively and practically
interested in the politics of his native land as a member of its
legislative bodies and as delegate to the national parliament at
Frankfurt in 1848. Uhland had a conservative love for the "good old
Suabian law." He felt the doubtful position of the South German states
in the struggle against Napoleon, and it was only when Würtemberg took
its stand with the allies in the final conflict that the embarrassment
of his position was relieved, and Uhland's patriotic verse assumed its
full tone. But his poetry never became a spur to national achievement
like the verse of Arndt, that other German poet-professor. As a member
of the national parliament, Uhland was opposed to the exclusion
of Austria from the hegemony, and to the two-chamber system of
legislation. But Uhland's conservatism is unalterably honest without
any reactionary traits; he resigned his professorship rather than be
hindered in his political activities, and refused, with the peasant's
dourness, all the orders and distinctions that were offered him.
Indeed, there is something of the peasant nature in all of Uhland's
verse. Sturdy reserve characterizes it--that reserve which forbids the
peasant to show his feelings under the stress of the greatest emotion.
Uhland does not carry his feelings to market; like Schiller, he is
not a love poet. There is no display, no self-analysis, no
self-exaltation, no amalgamation of self with nature. Uhland as a poet
is not interested in his own psychology, but in the impinging world
and in the tender past. When Goethe said that Uhland was primarily
a balladist, he was right, for the ballad presupposes just
that permeation of the object by the emotion that satisfies the
unquestionable lyric gift possessed by Uhland, without in any way
destroying the essentially narrative objectivity of his style.
Uhland's greatest fame rests, then, on his ballads. The difference
between these and those of Goethe and Schiller is not merely in
the so-called "castle-Romanticism" of Uhland, not in a lingering
sentimentality in some of the poorer ones, but in Uhland's ability at
will to catch the folk-tone. Sometimes this folk-tone is a question
of certain technical tricks, such as the abrupt shift of scene,
repetition, varying series of scenes or words, archaized language; but
it is just as often in the mood which Uhland throws over the whole. He
thus can catch the inner form and essential mood of the popular ballad
in a way that not even Goethe does in his _Erlking_. Uhland's ballads
and romances vary greatly in quality; none, perhaps, has the grandiose
dramatic and ethical note of Schiller's _The Cranes of Ibycus_
and none the power of revealing the hidden forces of nature in
anthropomorphic and demoniac form as Goethe does in his _Erlking_ and
_The Fisher_. But Uhland's poems are more varied in treatment, even
though he cannot be said to have brought any new forms and themes into
German verse. There is much talk of poets and poetry in his verse and
much of the tender melancholy of parting lovers, of separation and
death. There are also some very healthy bacchic notes. Often the
ballads are a mere presentation of a scene, with neither plot nor
moral; once in a while, too, Uhland shows a humorous touch. But
various as are his themes and treatments, the treatment is always
nicely adapted to the theme.
It is difficult to imagine a better suiting of form and content than
in _The Singer's Curse_. The management of the vowel sequences is
truly wonderful and the rhymes carry the emotional words with a fine
virtuosity. _The Luck of Edenhall_, a variation of a Scottish theme
and also of the Biblical "_Mene tekel_," displays without sermonizing
the greatest ethical vigor. It has far more dramatic energy than
either Byron's or Heine's "Belshazzar" poems, with fully as much
dismal foreboding. _Taillefer_, which has been called "the sparkling
queen" of Uhland's ballads, has fresh vigor but lacks the power
of handling the moral forces of the universe with as much dramatic
vividness. It has a naïve joy of life not elsewhere found in Uhland's
ballads.
Uhland was the greatest poet of the "Suabian School," a group of young
men who objected to being denominated a school. Among them was
William Hauff (1802-27), who is known for several lyrics, a number
of excellent short stories, and a historical novel, _Lichtenstein_
(1826), in the manner of Scott. His _Trooper's Song_ is a variation
of an old theme and is of great metrical interest in that here, as
in Uhland, one may observe how the subtle handling of rhythm, the
lengthening or shortening of a line, or the shift of stress, brings
with it a corresponding shift of emotion. _Lichtenstein_ is the story
of the struggle of Ulrich of Würtemberg against the Suabian League and
gives us a Romantic picture of the Duke which is not justified by the
facts. It was, however, an attempt to vitalize history and owes its
origin to the Romantic longing for fatherland. Its immediate impulse
among Scott's novels was _Quentin Durward_ and, like _Quentin
Durward_, it has a double plot--the sentimental young lovers and the
romantic ruler. It also shows all the pageantry of Romanticism and the
naïve technique of the beginning of an art-form in the early stages of
a new literary movement.
Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) was prevented from taking part in the
Wars of Liberation by poor health, but added his _Sonnets in Harness_
to the poetry of the period. These sonnets had no such stirring effect
as the poems of Körner, not only because of their literary form, but
because, in spite of their unquestioned belligerency, they had not the
tone of religious conviction against the enemy which characterized
the verses of Arndt and the rest. Other poems, like _Körner's Spirit_,
show how deeply Rückert felt himself in sympathy with his times; his
reward has been to have added a very large number of poems to the
every-day repertory of Germany. His _Barbarossa_ is found in almost
every reading book.
The cycle _Love's Spring_ is an imperishable monument to his love for
Louisa Wiethaus. But too many of the poems are dedicated to her and
too many inconsequential moods relating to her are recorded. In spite
of this, Rückert has resolved the discord between every-day life and
poetry with the simplest poetic apparatus. Rückert has also enriched
the German language with a mass of gnomic poetry, to the writing of
which he was led by his Oriental studies. This gnomic poetry (_The
Wisdom of the Brahman_) has been aptly said to recall at times the
ripeness of the mature Goethe and at other times--Polonius. Rückert
was one of the first to introduce the Orient and its verse-forms
into German literature. Here the influence of Friedrich Schlegel
is unmistakable. He was also a master in the reproduction of the
complicated metres of the East and South. Though many of these
verse-forms have refused to become indigenous in Germany, a large
number of new words invented by Rückert have had poetical vogue, and
even where the new formations were too bold or too _recherché_, they
accustomed German ears to a new idea-presentation through sound.
Rückert, like the average Romanticist, lacked moderation in his
production, and was utterly without critical faculty in respect to
his own verse. Much that he has written has perished, but some of his
work--both original and translation--is a permanent part of the best
of German lyric verse.
More individual than Rückert is Adalbert von Chamisso (1781-1838).
Though he was born in the Champagne in France, and was therefore a
fellow-countryman of Joinville and La Fontaine, he became a German
by education and preference, and his name is inseparably linked with
German scholarship and letters. It is remarkable that Chamisso began
to write German only after 1801 and is reported never to have spoken
it perfectly; yet his verse ranks with the best products of Germany in
fluency and in form. Much of it, especially that with woman's love as
its theme, is extremely German in thought and feeling, though perhaps
French in its keenness of analysis. So German is Chamisso felt to be
that at his best he is ranked with Goethe and Heine.
When the boy Chamisso was nine years old, the family was driven from
France but was later allowed to return, though Adalbert never went
back permanently. Thus it was that during the years 1806-13, the young
expatriate led a life of the greatest mental torment; France no longer
meant anything to him, and in Germany he felt himself a stranger and
an outcast. Always awkward personally, and of a nervous temperament,
he found it difficult to adjust himself to surrounding conditions.
His scholarly zeal, however, and his ability to sit for hours in close
study, show how completely his mentality was adjustable to the German
manner. In Berlin he was accepted by the younger Romantic group and
was a member of the famous North Star Club with Arnim and his set. In
1815-18 he made a trip around the world, and in later years devoted
himself especially to the study of botany.
Only the poetry of Chamisso's later period is of supreme consequence.
As a man in the fifties, he wrote some of his most beautiful verse.
He was a naïve poet, but a poet of many moods. His love poetry is the
poetry of longing, and ranks with that of Brentano in its ability to
suggest states of feeling. Among his best poems are his verse-tales,
such as _The Women of Weinsberg_, where his narrative genius ranks
with that of his fellow-countryman, La Fontaine. Especially good are
his poems in terzines. These mark the real introduction of this metre
into Germany. The best of these, _Salas y Gomez_, has the additional
advantage of real experience, for the material observation at the
basis of it is derived from his tour of circumnavigation. His poems in
this metre are often genre poems, pure prose in part, but frequently
of a drastic humor that ranks with that of the best of the old French
fabliaux. His realism is, however, never common, and, in such poems as
_The Old Washerwoman_, to quote Goethe's _Tasso_, "he often ennobles
what seems vulgar to us."
Chamisso is Romantic in his interest in translations, in early
reminiscences of Uhland's "castle-Romanticism," and in his poetry of
indefinite longing, but his admiration for Napoleon and his tendency
toward realism point the way which all Romanticism naturally took--the
way leading through Heine to Young Germany on the one hand and through
Tieck's novelettes to realistic prose on the other.
As a matter of fact, the work for which Chamisso is best known, a
work which has become international in popularity, _Peter Schlemihl_
(1813), is an early bit of such realistic prose. The tale of the
man who sells his shadow to the devil for the sake of the sack of
Fortunatus has become in Chamisso's hands a genuine folk-fairy-tale
in key-note and style. At the same time it is thoroughly Romantic
in subject-matter and treatment. The word Schlemihl is a Hebrew word
variously interpreted as "Lover of God," or as "awkward fellow." If
it mean the former, Schlemihl then becomes a Theophilus, that medieval
Faust who also made a compact with the devil; if the latter, one who
breaks his finger when sticking it into a custard pie; then Schlemihl
is Chamisso himself, "that dean of Schlemihls," feeling himself at a
loss in any environment. He may be the man without a country, he may
be the man who draws attention to himself by selling what seems of
little value to him, but which afterward proves indispensable for the
right conduct of life. The story in this way brings forward a bit
of popular ethics, or, rather, it examines an ethical note from the
popular point of view. Like Hoffmann, Chamisso takes his reader into
the midst of current life, but, unlike Hoffmann, his moods are not
the dissolving views which leave the reader in doubt as to whether
the whole is a phantasmagoria and a hallucination. _Schlemihl_ is
genuinely and consistently realistic. It is a story in the first
person and has a rigidly logical arrangement of episodes leading up to
its climax. It does not make mood--it has mood.
The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are the products of Romantic
scholarship; they represent the highest type of scholarly attainment
and of scholarly personality. They are always thought of together, for
they shared all possessions alike and were not drawn apart by the fact
that William married and Jacob remained a bachelor. Their fidelity to
each other is touching, and no more lovable story is told than that
of Jacob's breaking down in a lecture and crying, "My brother is so
sick!"
Jacob (1785-1863) was the philologist, the inductive gatherer of
scientific material, the close logical deducer of facts. He "presented
Germany with its mythology, with its history of legal antiquities,
with its grammar and its history of language." He is the author of
Grimm's law of consonant permutation which laid the foundations of
modern philological science and is the founder of philological science
in general.
Wilhelm (1786-1859), no less exact a scientist, was more a Romantic
nature, with a greater power of synthesis under poetic stress. The
two brothers began their collecting activities under the influence
of Arnim, and their work with folk-tales in prose corresponds to _The
Boy's Magic Horn_ in verse. It was Wilhelm who gave Grimms' _Fairy
Tales_ their artistic form. He remolded, joined, separated--in
fact, wrought the crude materials into such shape that this work has
penetrated into every land and has become a household word for young
and old. The various early editions show the progress in the method
of Wilhelm. The first edition (1812) reproduces more exactly what the
brothers heard; the later ones show that Wilhelm consciously attempted
to give artistic form to the tales. That his method was justified
the history of the stories proves; they are not only material for
ethnological study, but are dear to all hearts. The stories have the
genuine folk-tone; they are true products of the folk-imagination,
with all the logic of that imagination. All phases of life are touched
and the interest never flags. The spirit of nature has been kept.
The Romanticists were not successful in the drama. Kleist, the
greatest dramatist of the period, was not primarily a Romantic
poet. The Schlegels wrote frosty plays and Tieck attempted dramatic
production. It was left for the most bizarre of the Romantic group to
write the play of greatest power in it and to set a dramatic fashion
which for more than a decade carried all before it.
Zacharias Werner (1768-1823), after a life of wild sensual excesses,
finally found refuge in the Roman Church and as a popular and
sensational preacher aroused Vienna with drastic sermons and clownish
antics. Of his various plays, _The Sons of the Valley_ (1803) and the
_Cross on the Baltic_ (1806) deserve mention for their religious
and mystic subject-matter, for which Werner himself has attempted an
explanation, though without adding to their understanding. _Martin
Luther, or the Consecration of Power_ (1807) is a pageant play of
great interest. Its recantation, _The Power of Weakness_, was written
after Werner's conversion. More important than these is his so-called
"fate tragedy," _The 24th of February_ (1810 per formed in Weimar;
published 1815). This day was a day of terror to Werner, for on it
he lost in the same year his mother and his most intimate friend. He
therefore in the play invests the day with a fatal significance, and
on it a malignant fate has especial power over the fortunes of the
persons of the drama; there is also a fatal requisite and a general
atmosphere of fatalism. The play started a whole series; some of
these were crude and weak imitations, others, like Grillparzer's _The
Ancestress_, were of great power. These plays were conditioned by
something in the air. Perhaps Napoleon, the man of fate, ruling the
minds and destinies of a whole continent, had something to do with the
philosophical background. Werner caught the fatalistic spirit, gave it
concise and logical form, and succeeded in producing a play which has
both atmosphere and logic of development. In all of these plays, in so
far as they are good, the effect is produced by the recognition
scenes which hold the reader rapt to the end. But the weak and vulgar
imitations of the category outnumbered the powerful plays in the
_genre_, and the well-merited death-blow was given them by Platen's
_The Fateful Fork_ (1826).
E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) was a thoroughly Romantic person. Like
his fellow-Königsberger, Werner, he went through a period of wildest
dissipation, and all his life was easily influenced by alcohol. He was
a painter, a writer, and a musician. His ability in the pictorial arts
was mainly in caricature and his career as a composer is typically
Romantic; though he never but once completed a composition, that he
started, he was thoroughly at home in the theory of the art. Like all
Romanticists, Hoffmann was interested in and tried all phases of life
and refused to recognize the boundaries between the various parts
of existence, between the arts, and between reality and unreality.
Hoffmann, with all his North German power of reasoning and his zeal
and conscientiousness in public office, was emphatically _that_
Romanticist associated with the night-sides of literature and life.
There is something uncanny both in the man and his writings. His
power of putting the scene of his most unreal stories in the midst of
well-known places, his ability to shift the reader from the real
to the unreal and _vice versa_, make some of his stories seem like
phantasmagorias.
In all of Hoffmann's stories there is some unpleasant, bizarre
character; this is the author's satire on his own strange personality.
There is none of Poe's objectivity in Hoffmann, but he uses his
subjectivity in a peculiarly Romantic fashion. It is his idea to raise
the reader above the every-day point of view, to flee from this to
a magic world where the unusual shall take the place of the real and
where wonder shall rule. So there are in Hoffmann's stories a series
of characters who are really doubles. To the uninitiated they seem
every-day creatures; to those who know, they are fairies or beings
from the supernatural world. Such characters are found at their best
in _The Golden Pot_.
Hoffmann has influenced both French and English literatures more than
any other Romantic poet. Hawthorne and Poe read him, and he was felt
by the French to be one of the first Germans whom they understood. It
was not merely that his clear reason appealed to the French, but that
they saw in him one endowed as with a sixth sense. He has a fineness
of observation, especially for the ridiculous sides of humanity,
together with a tenderness of spirit, that was new in German
literature as such men as Sainte-Beuve and Gautier saw it. The soul
at war with itself, uncovering its most secret thoughts, the _"malheur
d'être poète,"_ coupled with wit, taste, gaiety, and the comedy
spirit--all these the French found in Hoffmann as in no other German.
Poe was also influenced by Hoffmann, but Poe's whole world is the
supernatural, and where Hoffmann slips with fantastic but logical
changes from the real to the unreal, Poe's metempsychosis is the real
in his world and he has a deeper insight into the world of terror. The
difference between Hawthorne and Hoffmann is even more striking, for
in the American the supernatural is the embodiment of the Puritan
New England conscience. In Hoffmann there is no such elevation of the
moral world to the rank of an atmosphere.
In Hoffmann there is no out-of-doors, no lyric love; some of his
characters are frankly insane. The musical takes on a supreme
significance among the sensations, and music seemed the only art which
was able to draw the soul of the man from his earth-bound habitation.
Only in music did Hoffmann find the ability to make the Romantic
escape from the homelessness of this existence to the all-embracing
world of the unreal. But too often in his works does the unreal fail
to satisfy the reader. There is an effort felt, an effect sought for,
and, while the amalgamation of the two worlds is perfect, the world
to which Hoffmann is able to take us proves to be without the cogency
which our imaginations expect. Here Hoffmann fails. His world of the
imagination cannot always be taken seriously.
Count August von Platen-Hallermund (1796-1835) is characterized by
the eternal Romantic homelessness; at every turn of his career this
impresses one. Of ancient noble Franconian stock, he felt himself a
foreigner in Bavaria which had acquired Franconia in the Napoleonic
period. In his early life in the military academy at Munich he was
never thoroughly at home, for his was not a military spirit and he was
unable to follow his literary tastes. When finally he was enabled to
study at Würzburg and Erlangen, even the friendship of Schelling could
not compensate for the late beginning of a university career which was
filled with the study of modern European and Oriental languages but
which had the bitterest personal disappointments. Even in Italy, the
land of every German poet's dreams, Platen never felt himself at
home, and the pictures of him from his Italian life are of a tragic,
lonesome figure. The discord between body and soul, that homelessness
in one's own physical body which characterized Hoffmann and made him
seem diabolical to so many, is also to be noted in Platen. Carried
over to the moral world, it accounts for his ardent cultivation of
friendship rather than love, and frees him from the bitter accusations
of Heine, whose attack in _The Baths of Lucca_ is one of the most
scurrilous and venomous pasquils in all literary history. Finally, in
the esthetic world, Platen seems largely un-German. His esthetics were
of the Classical and Renaissance times; in an age of the breaking
down of conventions and of literary revolutions, Platen held himself
rigidly aristocratic; he clung to a canon of beauty in an age which
was giving birth to realism.
Platen's poetry falls into two periods--the early German tentative
period and the later or foreign period, the poems of which were mostly
written in Italy and in imitation of, or adapted from, foreign metres.
Platen is always represented as a master of form, and, since
Jacob Grimm's characterization of him, has been accused of "marble
coldness." That Platen handled difficult metres with virtuosity is not
to be laid against him; it is to the advantage of German verse that
such poems as his _ghasels_ made indigenous, in part, the feeling for
mere beauty in verse. German poets have too often gone the road of
mere formlessness. Platen cultivated style, polished and revised his
lines with as great care as did his arch-enemy Heine, and it is only
a confession of lack of ear to refuse him the name of poet. No one who
reads his Polish Songs can help feeling that they are the products of
fire and inspiration.
It must be confessed, however, that there is in Platen a remarkable
lack of inner experience. He went through life without ever having
been shaken to the depths of his nature and was, unfortunately, not of
so Olympian a calmness that, like Goethe, he could present the world
in plastic repose and sublimity. With all his refinement and fervor he
has left but few poems of lasting interest, and of these _The Grave in
the Busento_ is perhaps the best.
[Illustration: THE MAGIC HORN]
_LUDWIG ACHIM VON ARNIM AND CLEMENS BRENTANO_
* * * * *
THE BOY'S MAGIC HORN[7] (1806)
WERE I A LITTLE BIRD
Were I a little bird,
And had two little wings,
I'd fly to thee;
But I must stay, because
That cannot be.
Though I be far from thee,
In sleep I dwell with thee,
Thy voice I hear.
But when I wake again,
Then all is drear.
Each nightly hour my heart
With thoughts of thee will start
When I'm alone;
For thou 'st a thousand times
Pledged me thine own.
* * * * *
THE MOUNTAINEER
Oh, would I were a falcon wild,
I should spread my wings and soar;
Then I should come a-swooping down
By a wealthy burgher's door.
In his house there dwells a maiden,
She is called fair Magdalene,
And a fairer brown-eyed damsel
All my days I have not seen.
On a Monday morning early,
Monday morning, they relate,
Magdalene was seen a-walking
Through the city's northern gate.
Then the maidens said: "Thy pardon--
Magdalene, where wouldst thou go?"
"Oh, into my father's garden,
Where I went the night, you know."
And when she to the garden came,
And straight into the garden ran,
There lay beneath the linden-tree
Asleep, a young and comely man.
"Wake up, young man, be stirring,
Oh rise, for time is dear,
I hear the keys a-rattling,
And mother will be here."
"Hearst thou her keys a-rattling,
And thy mother must be nigh,
Then o'er the heath this minute
Oh come with me, and fly!"
And as they wandered o'er the heath,
There for these twain was spread,
A shady linden-tree beneath,
A silken bridal-bed.
And three half hours together,
They lay upon the bed.
"Turn round, turn round, brown maiden;
Give me thy lips so red!"
"Thou sayst so much of turning round,
But naught of wedded troth,
I fear me I have slept away
My faith and honor both."
"And fearest thou, thou hast slept away
Thy faith and honor too,
I say I'll wed thee yet, my dear,
So thou shalt never rue."
Who was it sang this little lay,
And sang it o'er with cheer?
On St. Annenberg by the town,
It was the mountaineer.
He sang it there right gaily,
Drank mead and cool red wine,
Beside him sat and listened
Three dainty damsels fine.
As many as sand-grains in the sea,
As many as stars in heaven be,
As many as beasts that dwell in fields,
As many as pence which money yields,
As much as blood in veins will flow,
As much as heat in fire will glow,
As much as leaves in woods are seen
And little grasses in the green,
As many as thorns that prick on hedges,
As grains of wheat that harvest pledges,
As much as clover in meadows fair,
As dust a-flying in the air,
As many as fish in streams are found,
And shells upon the ocean's ground,
And drops that in the sea must go,
As many as flakes that shine in snow--
As much, as manifold as life abounds both far and nigh,
So much, so many times, for e'er, oh thank the Lord on high!
[Illustration: LUDWIG ACHIM VON ARNIM Ströhling]
[Illustration: CLEMENS BRENTANO E. Linder]
* * * * *
THE SWISS DESERTER
At Strassburg in the fort
All woe began for me
The Alpine bugle's call enticed me o'er,
I had to swim to my dear country's shore;
That should not be.
One hour 'twas in the night,
They took me in my plight,
And led me straightway to the captain's door.
O God, they caught me in the stream--what more?
Now all is o'er.
Tomorrow morn at ten
The regiment I'll have to face;
They'll lead me there to beg for grace.
I'll have my just reward, I know.
It must be so.
Ye brothers, all ye men,
Ye'll never see me here again;
The shepherd boy, I say, began it all,
And I accuse the Alpine bugle-call
Of this my fall.
I pray ye, brothers three,
Come on and shoot at me;
Fear not my tender life to hurt,
Shoot on and let the red blood spurt--
Come on, I say!
O Lord of heaven, on high!
Take my poor erring soul
Unto its heavenly goal;
There let it stay forever--
Forget me never!
* * * * *
THE TAILOR IN HELL
A tailor 'gan to wander
One Monday morning fair,
And then he met the devil,
Whose feet and legs were bare:
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Come now with me to hell--oh,
And measure clothes for us to wear,
For what we will, is well, oh!
The tailor measured, then he took
His scissors long, and clipped
The devils' little tails all off,
And to and fro they skipped.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now hie thee out of hell--oh,
We do not need this clipping, sir,
For what we will, is well, oh!
The tailor took his iron out,
And tossed it in the fire;
The devils' wrinkles then he pressed;
Their screams were something dire.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Begone now from our hell--oh,
We do not need this pressing,
For what we will, is well, oh!
"Keep still!" he said and pierced their heads
With a bodkin from his sack.
"This way we put the buttons on,
For that's our tailor's knack!
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now get thee out of hell--oh,
We do not need this dressing,
For what we will, is well, oh!
With thimble and with needle then
His stitching he began,
And closed the devils' nostrils up
As tight as e'er one can.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now his thee out of hell--oh,
We cannot use our noses,
Do what we will for smell, oh!
Then he began to cut away--
It must have made them smart;
With all his might the tailor ripped
The devils' ears apart.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now march away from hell--oh,
We else should need a doctor,
If what we will were well--oh!
And last of all came Lucifer
And cried: "What horror fell!
No devil has his little tail;
So drive him out of hell."
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now his thee out of hell--oh,
We need to wear no clothes at all--
For what we will, is well, oh!
And when the tailor's sack was packed,
He felt so very well--oh!
He hopped and skipped without dismay
And had a laughing spell, oh!
And hurried out of hell--oh,
And stayed a tailor-fellow;
And the devil will catch no tailor now,
Let him steal, as he will--it is well, though!
[Illustration: THE REAPER Walter Crane]
* * * * *
THE REAPER
There is a reaper, Death his name;
His might from God the highest came.
Today his knife he'll whet,
'Twill cut far better yet;
Soon he will come and mow,
And we must bear the woe--
Beware, fair flower!
The flowers fresh and green today,
Tomorrow will be mowed away
Narcissus so white,
The meadows' delight,
The hyacinthias pale
And morning-glories frail--
Beware, fair flower!
Full many thousand blossoms blithe
Must fall beneath his deadly scythe:
Roses and lilies pure,
Your end is all too sure!
Imperial lilies rare
He will not spare--
Beware, fair flower!
The bluet wee, of heaven's hue,
The tulips white and yellow too,
The dainty silver bell,
The golden phlox as well--
All sink upon the earth.
Oh, what a sorry dearth!
Beware, fair flower!
Sweet lavender of lovely scent,
And rosemary, dear ornament,
Sword-lilies proud, unfurled,
And basil, quaintly curled,
And fragile violet blue--
He soon will seize you too!
Beware, fair flower!
Death, I defy thee! Hasten near
With one great sweep--I have no fear!
Though hurt, I'll stay undaunted,
For I shall be transplanted
Into the garden by heaven's gate,
The heavenly garden we all await.
Rejoice, fair flower!
_JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM_
* * * * *
FAIRY TALES[8] (1812)
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY MARGARET HUNT
THE FROG-KING, OR IRON HENRY
In old times, when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose
daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that
the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it
shone in her face. Close by the King's castle lay a great dark forest,
and under an old lime-tree in the forest was a well, and when the day
was warm the King's child went out into the forest and sat down by
the side of the cool fountain, and when she was dull she took a
golden ball and threw it up high and caught it, and this ball was her
favorite plaything.
Now it so happened that, on one occasion, the princess' golden ball
did not fall into the little hand which she was holding up for it, but
onto the ground beyond, and rolled straight into the water. The King's
daughter followed it with her eyes, but it vanished, and the well was
deep so deep that the bottom could not be seen. On this she began to
cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be comforted. And
as she thus lamented, some one said to her: "What ails thee, King's
daughter? Thou weepest so that even a stone would show pity." She
looked around to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a
frog stretching forth its thick, ugly head from the water. "Ah! old
water-splasher, is it thou?" asked she; "I am weeping for my golden
ball, which has fallen into the well."
[Illustration: JACOB GRIMM E. Hader]
[Illustration: WILLIAM GRIMM E. Hader]
"Be quiet, and do not weep," answered the frog; "I can help thee; but
what wilt thou give me if I bring thy plaything up again?" "Whatever
thou wilt have, dear frog," said she--"my clothes, my pearls and
jewels, and even the golden crown which I am wearing."
The frog answered, "I do not care for thy clothes, thy pearls and
jewels, or thy golden crown, but if thou wilt love me and let me be
thy companion and play-fellow, and sit by thee at thy little table,
and eat off thy little golden plate, and drink out of thy little cup,
and sleep in thy little bed--if thou wilt promise me this I will go
down below and bring thee thy golden ball again."
"Oh, yes," said she, "I promise thee all thou wishest, if thou wilt
but bring me my ball back again." She, how ever, thought, "How the
silly frog does talk! He lives in the water with the other frogs and
croaks, and can be no companion to any human being!"
But the frog, when he had received this promise, put his head into the
water and sank down, and in a short time came swimming up again with
the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the grass. The King's daughter
was delighted to see her pretty plaything once more, and picked it up,
and ran away with it. "Wait, wait," said the frog; "take me with thee;
I can't run as thou canst." But what did it avail him to scream his
croak, croak, after her, as loudly as he could? She did not listen to
it, but ran home and soon forgot the poor frog, who was forced to go
back into his well again.
The next day, when she had seated herself at the table with the King
and all the courtiers and was eating from her little golden plate,
something came creeping splish splash, splish splash, up the marble
staircase, and when it had got to the top, it knocked at the door and
cried, "Princess, youngest princess, open the door for me." She ran to
see who was outside, but when she opened the door, there sat the frog
in front of it. Then she slammed the door to, in great haste, sat down
to dinner again, and was quite frightened. The King saw plainly that
her heart was beating violently, and said, "My child, what art thou so
afraid of? Is there perchance a giant outside who wants to carry thee
away?" "Ah, no," replied she, "it is no giant, but a disgusting frog."
"What does the frog want with thee?" "Ah, dear father, yesterday when
I was in the forest sitting by the well, playing, my golden ball fell
into the water. And because I cried so the frog brought it out again
for me, and because he insisted so on it, I promised him he should be
my companion; but I never thought he would be able to come out of his
water! And now he is outside there, and wants to come in to me."
In the meantime it knocked a second time, and cried
"Princess! youngest princess!
Open the door for me!
Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me
Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain!
Princess, youngest princess!
Open the door for me!"
Then said the King, "That which thou has promised must thou perform.
Go and let him in." She went and opened the door, and the frog hopped
in and followed her, step by step, to her chair. There he sat still
and cried, "Lift me up beside thee." She delayed, until at last the
King commanded her to do it. When the frog was once on the chair he
wanted to be on the table, and when he was on the table he said, "Now,
push thy little golden plate nearer to me that we may eat together."
She did this, but it was easy to see that she did not do it willingly.
The frog enjoyed what he ate, but almost every mouthful she took
choked her. At length he said, "I have eaten and am satisfied; now I
am tired, carry me into thy little room and make thy little silken bed
ready, and we will both lie down and go to sleep."
The King's daughter began to cry, for she was afraid of the cold frog
which she did not like to touch, and which was now to sleep in her
pretty, clean little bed. But the King grew angry and said, "He
who helped thee when thou wert in trouble ought not afterward to be
despised by thee." So she took hold of the frog with two fingers,
carried him upstairs, and put him in a corner. But when she was in
bed he crept to her and said, "I am tired, I want to sleep as well
as thou; lift me up or I will tell thy father." Then she was terribly
angry, and took him up and threw him with all her might against the
wall. "Now thou wilt be quiet, odious frog," said she. But when he
fell down he was no frog but a king's son with beautiful kind eyes. He
by her father's will was now her dear companion and husband. Then he
told her how he had been bewitched by a wicked witch, and how no one
could have delivered him from the well but herself, and that tomorrow
they would go together into his kingdom. Then they went to sleep, and
next morning when the sun awoke them, a carriage came driving up with
eight white horses, which had white ostrich feathers on their heads,
and were harnessed with golden chains, and behind stood the young
King's servant, faithful Henry. Faithful Henry had been so unhappy
when his master was changed into a frog that he had caused three iron
bands to be laid round his heart, lest it should burst with grief and
sadness. The carriage was to conduct the young King into his kingdom.
Faithful Henry helped them both in, and placed himself behind again,
and was full of joy because of this deliverance. And when they had
driven a part of the way, the King's son heard a crackling behind him
as if something had broken. So he turned round and cried, "Henry, the
carriage is breaking."
"No, master, it is not the carriage. It is a band from my heart, which
was put there in my great pain when you were a frog and imprisoned in
the well." Again and once again while they were on their way something
cracked, and each time the King's son thought the carriage was
breaking; but it was only the bands which were springing from the
heart of faithful Henry because his master was set free and was happy.
* * * * *
THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS
There was once on a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and
she loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day
she wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called
all seven to her and said, "Dear children, I have to go into the
forest; be on your guard against the wolf; if he comes in, he will
devour you all--skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often disguises
himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his
black feet." The kids said, "Dear mother, we will take good care of
ourselves; you may go away without any anxiety." Then the old one
bleated and went on her way with an easy mind.
It was not long before some one knocked at the house door, and cried,
"Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought
something back with her for each of you." But the little kids knew
that it was the wolf, by the rough voice. "We will not open the door,"
cried they; "thou art not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice,
but thy voice is rough; thou art the wolf!" Then the wolf went away to
a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this, and
made his voice soft with it. Then he came back, knocked at the door
of the house, and cried, "Open the door, dear children; your mother is
here and has brought something back with her for each of you." But the
wolf had laid his black paws against the window, and the children saw
them and cried, "We will not open the door; our mother has not black
feet like thee; thou art the wolf!" Then the wolf ran to a baker and
said, "I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me." And when
the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said,
"Strew some white meal over my feet for me." The miller thought to
himself, "The wolf wants to deceive some one," and refused; but the
wolf said, "If thou wilt not do it, I will devour thee." Then the
miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Truly men are like
that.
So now the wretch went for the third time to the house door, knocked
at it, and said, "Open the door for me, children; your dear little
mother has come home, and has brought every one of you something back
from the forest with her." The little kids cried, "First show us thy
paws that we may know if thou art our dear little mother." Then he put
his paws in through the window, and when the kids saw that they were
white, they believed that all he said was true, and opened the door.
But who should come in but the wolf! They were terrified and wanted to
hide themselves. One sprang under the table, the second into the bed,
the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into
the cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh
into the clock-case. But the wolf found them all, and used no great
ceremony; one after the other he swallowed them down his throat. The
youngest in the clock-case was the only one he did not find. When the
wolf had satisfied his appetite he took himself off, laid himself
down under a tree in the green meadow outside, and went to sleep. Soon
afterward the old goat came home again from the forest. Ah! what
a sight she saw there! The house door stood wide open. The table,
chairs, and benches were thrown down, the washing-bowl lay broken to
pieces, and the quilts and pillows were pulled off the bed. She sought
her children, but they were nowhere to be found. She called them one
after another by name, but no one answered. At last, when she came
to the youngest, a soft voice cried, "Dear mother, I am in the
clock-case." She took the kid out, and it told her that the wolf had
come and had eaten all the others. Then you may imagine how she wept
over her poor children.
At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with
her. When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree
snoring so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on every
side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his gorged
body. "Ah, heavens!" said she, "is it possible that my poor children,
whom he has swallowed down for his supper, can be still alive?" Then
the kid had to run home and fetch scissors, and a needle and thread,
and the goat cut open the monster's stomach. Hardly had she made one
cut than one little kid thrust its head out; and, when she had cut
further, all six sprang out one after another. They were all still
alive and had suffered no injury whatever, for in his greediness the
monster had swallowed them down whole. What rejoicing there was!
Then they embraced their dear mother, and jumped like a tailor at
his wedding. The mother, however, said, "Now go and look for some big
stones, and we will fill the wicked beast's stomach with them while he
is still asleep." Then the seven kids dragged the stones thither with
all speed, and put as many of them into his stomach as they could get
in; and the mother sewed him up again in the greatest haste, so that
he was not aware of anything, and never once stirred.
When the wolf at length had had his sleep out, he got on his legs,
and, as the stones in his stomach made him very thirsty, he wanted to
go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and to move about,
the stones in his stomach knocked against one another and rattled.
Then cried he--
"What rumbles and tumbles
Against my poor bones?
I thought 'twas six kids,
But it's naught but big stones."
And when he got to the well and stooped over the water and was just
about to drink, the heavy stones made him fall in and there was no
help, but he had to drown miserably. When the seven kids saw that,
they came running to the spot, and cried aloud, "The wolf is dead!
The wolf is dead!" and danced for joy round about the well with their
mother.
* * * * *
RAPUNZEL
There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for
a child. At length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her
desire. These people had a little window at the back of their house
from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most
beautiful flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high
wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an
enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world. One
day the woman was standing by this window and looking down into the
garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful
rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed
for it, and had the greatest desire to eat some. This desire increased
every day, and as she knew that she could not get any of it, she
quite pined away and looked pale and miserable. Then her husband was
alarmed, and asked, "What aileth thee, dear wife?" "Ah," she replied,
"if I can't get some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our
house, to eat, I shall die." The man, who loved her, thought, "Sooner
than let my wife die, I will bring her some of the rampion myself,
let it cost me what it will." In the twilight of evening, he clambered
down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily
clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his wife. She at once
made herself a salad of it and ate it with much relish. She, however,
liked it so much, so very much, that the next day she longed for it
three times as much as before, and, if he was to have any rest,
her husband must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom
of evening, therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had
clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the
enchantress standing before him. "How can't thou dare," said she with
angry look, "to descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a
thief? Thou shalt suffer for it!" "Ah," answered he, "let mercy
take the place of justice; I only made up my mind to do it out of
necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the window, and felt such
a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some to
eat." Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and said
to him, "If the case be as thou sayest, I will allow thee to take
away with thee as much rampion as thou wilt, only I make one
condition--thou must give me the child which thy wife will bring into
the world; it shall be well treated and I will care for it like a
mother." The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the
woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the
child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child beneath the sun. When she
was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower which lay
in a forest and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top
was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed
herself beneath this, and cried cried--
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair to me."
Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she
heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses,
wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the
hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.
After a year or two, it came to pass that the King's son rode through
the forest and went by the tower; there he heard a song, which was so
charming that he stood still and listened. This was Rapunzel, who in
her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The
King's son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the
tower, but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so
deeply touched his heart that every day he went out into the forest
and listened to it. Once, when he was thus standing behind a tree, he
saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried--
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair."
Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress
climbed up to her. "If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I will
for once try my fortune," said he; and the next day when it began to
grow dark, he went to the tower and cried--
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair."
Immediately the hair fell down and the King's son climbed up.
At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man such as her eyes
had never yet beheld came to her; but the King's son began to talk
to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so
stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to
see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she
would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and
handsome, she thought, "He will love me more than old Dame Gothel
does;" and she said yes, and laid her hand in his. She said, "I will
willingly go away with thee, but I do not know how to get down. Bring
with thee a skein of silk every time that thou comest, and I will
weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and
thou wilt take me on thy horse." They agreed that, until that time, he
should always come to see her in the evening, for the old woman came
by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until once Rapunzel
said to her, "Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so
much heavier for me to draw up than the young King's son--he is with
me in a moment." "Ah! thou wicked child," cried the enchantress, "what
do I hear thee say? I thought I had separated thee from all the world,
and yet thou hast deceived me!" In her anger she clutched Rapunzel's
beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a
pair of scissors with the right, and, snip, snap, they were cut off,
and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that
she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great
grief and misery.
On the same day, however, that she cast out Rapunzel, the enchantress
in the evening fastened the braids of hair which she had cut off to
the hook of the window, and when the King's son came and cried cried--
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair,"
she let the hair down. The King's son ascended, but he did not find
his dearest Rapunzel above-only the enchantress, who gazed at him with
wicked and venomous looks. "Aha!" she cried mockingly, "thou wouldst
fetch thy dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in
the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out thy eyes as well.
Rapunzel is lost to thee; thou wilt never see her more." The King's
son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair leapt down from
the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell
pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate
nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but lament and weep
over the loss of his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for
some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with
the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in
wretchedness. He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that
he went toward it, and, when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell
on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew
clear again so that he could see with them as before. He led her to
his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long
time afterward, happy and contented.
* * * * *
HAENSEL AND GRETHEL
Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his
two children. The boy was called Haensel and the girl Grethel. He had
little to bite and to break, and once, when great scarcity fell on the
land, he could no longer procure daily bread. Now when he thought over
this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned
and said to his wife, "What is to become of us? How are we to feed
our poor children when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?"
"I'll tell you what, husband," answered the woman, "early tomorrow
morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is
the thickest, and there we will light a fire for them, and give each
of them one piece of bread more; then we will go to our work and leave
them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be
rid of them." "No, wife," said the man, "I will not do that; how can I
bear to leave my children alone in the forest? The wild animals would
soon come and tear them to pieces." "O, thou fool!" said she, "then we
must all four die of hunger and thou mayest as well plane the planks
for our coffins;" and she left him no peace until he consented. "But I
feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same," said the man.
[Illustration: HÄNSEL AND GRETHEL Ludwig Richter]
The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had
heard what their step-mother had said to their father. Grethel wept
bitter tears, and said to Haensel, "Now all is over with us." "Be
quiet, Grethel," said Haensel. "Do not distress thyself, I will soon
find a way to help us." And when the old folks had fallen asleep, he
got up, put on his coat, opened the door below, and crept outside. The
moon shone brightly and the white pebbles which lay in front of the
house glittered like real silver pennies. Haensel stooped and put as
many of them in the little pocket of his coat as he could possibly get
in. Then he went back and said to Grethel, "Be comforted, dear little
sister, and sleep in peace; God will not forsake us;" and he lay down
again in his bed. When day dawned, but before the sun had risen, the
woman came and awoke the two children, saying, "Get up, you sluggards!
we are going into the forest to fetch wood." She gave each a little
piece of bread, and said, "There is something for your dinner, but
do not eat it up before then, for you will get nothing else." Grethel
took the bread under her apron, as Haensel had the stones in his
pocket. Then they all set out together on the way to the forest. When
they, had walked a short time, Haensel stood still and peeped back at
the house, and did so again and again. His father said, "Haensel, what
art thou looking at there and staying behind for? Mind what thou art
about, and do not forget how to use thy legs." "Ah, father," said
Haensel, "I am looking at my little white cat, which is sitting upon
the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me." The wife said, "Fool, that
is not thy little cat; that is the morning sun which is shining on the
chimneys." Haensel, however, had not been looking back at the cat, but
had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his
pocket on the road.
When they had reached the middle of the forest, the father said, "Now,
children, pile up some wood, and I will light a fire that you may not
be cold." Haensel and Grethel gathered brushwood together, as high
as a little hill. The brushwood was lighted, and when the flames were
burning very high the woman said, "Now, children, lay yourselves down
by the fire and rest and we will go into the forest and cut some wood.
When we have done, we will come back and fetch you away."
Haensel and Grethel sat by the fire, and, when noon came, each ate a
little piece of bread, but, as they heard the strokes of the wood-axe,
they believed that their father was near. It was, however, not the
axe; it was a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which
the wind was blowing backward and forward; and, as they had been
sitting such a long time, their eyes shut with fatigue and they
fell fast asleep. When at last they awoke it was already dark night.
Grethel began to cry and said, "How are we to get out of the forest
now?" But Haensel comforted her and said, "Just wait a little, until
the moon has risen, and then we will soon find the way." And when the
full moon had risen, Haensel took his little sister by the hand and
followed the pebbles, which shone like newly-coined silver pieces and
showed them the way.
They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came once more
to their father's house. They knocked at the door, and when the woman
opened it and saw that it was Haensel and Grethel, she said, "You
naughty children, why have you slept so long in the forest? We thought
you were never coming back at all!" The father, however, rejoiced, for
it had cut him to the heart to leave them behind alone.
Not long afterward, there was once more great scarcity in all parts,
and the children heard their mother saying at night to their father,
"Everything is eaten again; we have one-half loaf left, and after that
there is an end. The children must go. We will take them farther into
the wood, so that they will not find their way out again; there is no
other means of saving ourselves!" The man's heart was heavy, and he
thought, "It would be better for thee to share the last mouthful with
thy children." The woman, however, would listen to nothing that he
had to say, but scolded and reproached him. He who says A must say
B likewise, and, as he had yielded the first time, he had to do so a
second time also.
The children were, however, still awake and had heard the
conversation. When the old folks were asleep, Haensel again got up,
and wanted to go out and pick up pebbles; but the woman had locked
the door, and Haensel could not get out. Nevertheless he comforted his
little sister, and said, "Do not cry, Grethel, go to sleep quietly.
The good God will help us."
Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of
their beds. Their bit of bread was given to them, but it was still
smaller than the time before. On the way into the forest Haensel
crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel
on the ground. "Haensel, why dost thou stop and look around?" asked
the father; "go on." "I am looking back at my little pigeon which
is sitting on the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me," answered
Haensel. "Simpleton!" said the woman, "that is not thy little pigeon,
that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney." Haensel,
however, little by little, threw all the crumbs on the path.
The woman led the children still deeper into the forest, where they
had never in their lives been before. Then a great fire was again
made, and the mother said, "Just sit there, you children, and when you
are tired you may sleep a little; we are going into the forest to cut
wood, and in the evening, when we are done, we will come and fetch
you away." When it was noon, Grethel shared her piece of bread with
Haensel, who had scattered his by the way. Then they fell asleep and
evening came and went, but no one came to the poor children. They did
not awake until it was dark night; but Haensel comforted his little
sister and said, "Just wait, Grethel, until the moon rises, and then
we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have strewn about. They will
show us our way home again." When the moon rose they set out, but they
found no crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in
the woods and fields had picked them all up. Haensel said to Grethel,
"We shall soon find the way," but they did not find it. They walked
the whole night and all the next day too, from morning till evening,
but they did not get out of the forest, and were very hungry, for they
had nothing to eat but two or three berries which grew on the ground.
And as they were so weary that their legs would carry them no longer,
they lay down beneath a tree and fell asleep.
It was now three mornings since they had left their father's house.
They began to walk again, but they always got so much deeper into the
forest that, if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and
weariness. When it was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird
sitting on a bough, which sang so delightfully that they stood still
and listened to it. And when it had finished its song, it spread
its wings and flew away before them, and they followed it until they
reached a little house, on the roof of which it alighted; and when
they came quite up to the little house they saw that it was built
of bread and covered with cakes, and that the windows were of clear
sugar. "We will set to work on that," said Haensel, "and have a good
meal. I will eat a bit of the roof, and thou, Grethel, canst eat some
of the window; it will taste sweet." Haensel reached up above, and
broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Grethel leant
against the window and nibbled at the panes. Then a soft voice cried
from the room--
"Nibble, nibble, gnaw,
Who is nibbling at my little house?"
The children answered--
"The wind, the wind,
The heaven-born wind,"
and went on eating without disturbing themselves.
Haensel, who thought the roof tasted very nice, tore down a
great piece of it, and Grethel pushed out the whole of one round
window-pane, sat down, and enjoyed herself with it. Suddenly the door
opened, and a very, very old woman, who supported herself on crutches,
came creeping out. Haensel and Grethel were so terribly frightened
that they let fall what they had in their hands. The old woman,
however, nodded her head, and said, "Oh, you dear children, who has
brought you here? Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen
to you." She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little
house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes, with
sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterward two pretty little beds were covered
with clean white linen, and Haensel and Grethel lay down in them, and
thought they were in heaven.
The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality
a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the
little bread house in order to entice them there. When a child fell
into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast
day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have
a keen scent, like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw
near. When Haensel and Grethel came into her neighborhood, she laughed
maliciously, and said mockingly, "I have them; they shall not escape
me again!" Early in the morning, before the children were awake, she
was already up, and when she saw both of them sleeping and looking so
pretty, with their plump red cheeks, she muttered to herself, "That
will be a dainty mouthful!" Then she seized Haensel with her shriveled
hand, carried him into a little stable, and shut him in with a grated
door. He might scream as he liked, that was of no use. Then she went
to Grethel, shook her till she awoke, and cried, "Get up, lazy thing,
fetch some water, and cook something good for thy brother; he is in
the stable outside, and is to be made fat. When he is fat, I will eat
him." Grethel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain; she was
forced to do what the wicked witch ordered her.
And now the best food was cooked for poor Haensel, but Grethel got
nothing but crab-shells. Every morning the woman crept to the little
stable, and cried, "Haensel, stretch out thy finger that I may feel if
thou wilt soon be fat." Haensel, however, stretched out a little bone
to her, and the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not see it, and
thought it was Haensel's finger, and was astonished that there was no
way of fattening him. When four weeks had gone by, and Haensel still
continued thin, she was seized with impatience and would not wait any
longer. "Hola, Grethel," she cried to the girl, "be active, and bring
some water. Let Haensel be fat or lean, tomorrow I will kill him and
cook him." Ah, how the poor little sister did lament when she had
to fetch the water, and how her tears did flow down over her cheeks!
"Dear God, do help us!" she cried. "If the wild beasts in the forest
had but devoured us, we should at any rate have died together." "Just
keep thy noise to thyself," said the old woman; "all that won't help
thee at all."
Early in the morning, Grethel had to go out and hang up the caldron
with the water, and light the fire. "We will bake first," said the old
woman; "I have already heated the oven, and kneaded the dough." She
pushed poor Grethel out to the oven from which flames of fire were
already darting. "Creep in," said the witch, "and see if it is
properly heated, so that we can shut the bread in." And when once
Grethel was inside, she intended to shut the oven and let her bake in
it, and then she would eat her, too. But Grethel saw what she had in
her mind, and said, "I do not know how I am to do it; how do you get
in?" "Silly goose," said the old woman. "The door is big enough; just
look, I can get in myself!" and she crept up and thrust her head into
the oven. Then Grethel gave her a push that drove her far into it, and
shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh! then she began to
howl quite horribly, but Grethel ran away, and the godless witch was
miserably burnt to death.
Grethel, however, ran as quick as lightning to Haensel, opened his
little stable, and cried, "Haensel, we are saved! The old witch is
dead!" Then Haensel sprang out like a bird from its cage when the door
is opened for it. How they did rejoice and embrace each other, and
dance about and kiss each other! And as they had no longer any need to
fear her, they went into the witch's house; and in every corner there
stood chests full of pearls and jewels. "These are far better than
pebbles!" said Haensel, and thrust into his pockets whatever could be
got in; and Grethel said, "I, too, will take something home with me,"
and filled her pinafore full. "But now we will go away," said Haensel,
"that we may get out of the witch's forest."
When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great piece of
water. "We cannot get over," said Haensel, "I see no foot-plank, and
no bridge." "And no boat crosses either," answered Grethel, "but a
white duck is swimming there; if I ask her, she will help us over."
Then she cried--
"Little duck, little duck, dost thou see,
Haensel and Grethel are waiting for thee?
There's never a plank, or bridge in sight,
Take us across on thy back so white."
The duck came to them, and Haensel seated himself on its back, and
told his sister to sit by him. "No," replied Grethel, "that will be
too heavy for the little duck; she shall take us across, one after the
other." The good little duck did so, and when they were once safely
across and had walked for a short time, the forest seemed to be more
and more familiar to them, and at length they saw from afar their
father's house. Then they began to run, rushed into the parlor, and
threw themselves into their father's arms. The man had not known one
happy hour since he had left the children in the forest; the woman,
however, was dead. Grethel emptied her pinafore until pearls and
precious stones ran about the room, and Haensel threw one handful
after another out of his pocket to add to them. Then all anxiety was
at an end, and they lived together in perfect happiness. My tale is
done. There runs a mouse; whosoever catches it may make himself a big
fur cap out of it.
* * * * *
THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE
There was once on a time a Fisherman who lived with his wife in a
miserable hovel close by the sea, and every day he went out fishing.
And once as he was sitting with his rod, looking at the clear water,
his line suddenly went down, far down below, and when he drew it up
again he brought out a large Flounder. Then the Flounder said to
him, "Hark, you Fisherman, I pray you, let me live; I am no Flounder
really, but an enchanted prince. What good will it do you to kill me?
I should not be good to eat; put me in the water again, and let me
go." "Come," said the Fisherman, "there is no need for so many words
about it--a fish that can talk I should certainly let go, anyhow."
With that he put him back again into the clear water, and the Flounder
went to the bottom, leaving a long streak of blood behind him.
Then the Fisherman got up and went home to his wife in the hovel.
"Husband," said the woman, "have you caught nothing today?" "No," said
the man; "I did catch a Flounder, who said he was an enchanted prince,
so I let him go again." "Did you not wish for anything first?" said
the woman. "No," said the man; "what should I wish for?" "Ah," said
the woman, "it is surely hard to have to live always in this dirty
hovel. You might have wished for a small cottage for us. Go back and
call him. Tell him we want to have a small cottage; he will certainly
give us that." "Ah," said the man, "why should I go there again?"
"Why," said the woman, "you did catch him, and you let him go again;
he is sure to do it. Go at once." The man still did not quite like to
go, but did not like to oppose his wife, either, and so went to the
sea. When he got there the sea was all green and yellow, and no longer
smooth, as before; so he stood and said--
"Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will."
Then the Flounder came swimming to him and said, "Well, what does she
want, then?" "Ah," said the man, "I did catch you, and my wife says I
really ought to have wished for something. She does not like to live
in a wretched hovel any longer; she would like to have a cottage."
"Go, then," said the Flounder, "she has it already."
When the man went home, his wife was no longer in the hovel, but,
instead of it, there stood a small cottage, and she was sitting on a
bench before the door. Then she took him by the hand and said to him,
"Just come inside, look, now isn't this a great deal better?" So they
went in, and there was a small porch, and a pretty little parlor and
bedroom and a kitchen and pantry, with the best of furniture, and
fitted up with the most beautiful things made of tin and brass,
whatsoever was wanted. And behind the cottage there was a small yard,
with hens and ducks, and a little garden with flowers and fruit.
"Look," said the wife, "is not that nice!" "Yes," said the husband,
"and so we must always think it; now we will live quite contented."
"We will think about that," said the wife. With that they ate
something and went to bed.
Everything went well for a week or a fortnight, and then the woman
said, "Hark you, husband, this cottage is far too small for us, and
the garden and yard are little; the Flounder might just as well
have given us a larger house. I should like to live in a great stone
castle; go to the Flounder, and tell him to give us a castle." "Ah,
wife," said the man, "the cottage is quite good enough; why should
we live in a castle?" "What!" said the woman; "just go there, the
Flounder can always do that." "No, wife," said the man, "the Flounder
has just given us the cottage; I do not like to go back so soon.
It might make him angry." "Go," said the woman, "he can do it quite
easily, and will be glad to do it; just you go to him."
The man's heart grew heavy, and he would not go. He said to himself,
"It is not right," and yet he went. And when he came to the sea the
water was quite purple and dark-blue, and gray and thick, and no
longer green and yellow; but it was still quiet. And he stood there
and said--
"Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will."
"Well, what does she want, then?" said the Flounder. "Alas," said the
man, half scared, "she wants to live in a great stone castle." "Go to
it, then, she is standing before the door," said the Flounder.
Then the man went away, intending to go home, but when he got there,
he found a great stone palace, and his wife was just standing on the
steps going in, and she took him by the hand and said, "Come in." So
he went in with her, and in the castle was a great hall paved with
marble, and many servants, who flung wide the doors; and the walls
were all bright with beautiful hangings, and in the rooms were
chairs and tables of pure gold, and crystal chandeliers hung from the
ceiling, and all the rooms and bedrooms had carpets, and food and wine
of the very best were standing on all the tables so that they nearly
broke down beneath it. Behind the house, too, there was a great
courtyard, with stables for horses and cows, and the very best of
carriages; there was a magnificent large garden, too, with the most
beautiful flowers and fruit-trees, and a park quite half a mile long,
in which were stags, deer, and hares, and everything that could
be desired. "Come," said the woman, "isn't that beautiful?" "Yes,
indeed," said the man; "now let it be; we will live in this beautiful
castle and be content." "We will consider about that," said the woman,
"and sleep upon it;" thereupon they went to bed.
Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just daybreak, and from
her bed she saw the beautiful country lying before her. Her husband
was still stretching himself, so she poked him in the side with her
elbow, and said, "Get up, husband, and just peep out of the window.
Look you, couldn't we be the King over all that land? Go to the
Flounder, we will be the King." "Ah, wife," said the man, "why should
we be King? I do not want to be King." "Well," said the wife, "if you
won't be King, I will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King." "Oh,
wife," said the man, "why do you want to be King? I do not like to
say that to him." "Why not?" asked the woman; "go to him this instant;
I must be King!" So the man went, and was quite unhappy because his
wife wished to be King. "It is not right; it is not right," thought
he. He did not wish to go; but yet he went.
And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark-gray, and the water
heaved up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it,
and said--
"Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will."
"Well, what does she want, then?" asked the Flounder. "Alas," said the
man, "she wants to be King." "Go to her; she is King already."
So the man went, and when he came to the palace, the castle had become
much larger, and had a great tower and magnificent ornaments, and
the sentinel was standing before the door, and there were numbers of
soldiers with kettle-drums and trumpets. And when he went inside the
house, everything was of real marble and gold, with velvet covers
and great golden tassels. Then the doors of the hall were opened, and
there was the court in all its splendor, and his wife was sitting on
a high throne of gold and diamonds, with a great crown of gold on her
head, and a sceptre of pure gold and jewels in her hand, and on both
sides of her stood her maids-in-waiting in a row, each of them always
one head shorter than the last.
Then he went and stood before her, and said, "Ah, wife, and now you
are King!" "Yes," said the woman, "now I am King." So he stood and
looked at her, and when he had looked at her thus for a time he said,
"And now that you are King, let all else be; now we will wish for
nothing more." "Nay, husband," said the woman, quite anxiously,
"I find time pass very heavily; I can bear it no longer; go to the
Flounder. I am King, but I must be Emperor, too."
"Alas, wife, why do you wish to be Emperor?" "Husband," said she, "go
to the Flounder. I will be Emperor." "Alas, wife," said the man, "he
cannot make you Emperor; I may not say that to the fish. There is only
one Emperor in the land. An Emperor the Flounder cannot make you! I
assure you he cannot."
"What!" said the woman, "I am the King, and you are nothing but my
husband; will you go this moment? Go at once! If he can make a king
he can make an emperor. I will be Emperor; go instantly." So he was
forced to go. As the man went, however, he was troubled in mind,
and thought to himself, "It will not end well; it will not end well!
Emperor is too shameless! The Flounder will at last be tired out."
With that he reached the sea, and the sea was quite black and thick,
and began to boil up from below, so that it threw up bubbles, and such
a sharp wind blew over it that it curdled, and the man was afraid.
Then he went and stood by it, and said--
"Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will."
"Well, what does she want, then?" asked the Flounder. "Alas,
Flounder," said he, "my wife wants to be Emperor." "Go to her," said
the Flounder; "she is Emperor already."
So the man went, and when he got there the whole palace was made
of polished marble with alabaster figures and golden ornaments, and
soldiers were marching before the door blowing trumpets, and beating
cymbals and drums; and in the house, barons, and counts, and dukes
were going about as servants. Then they opened the doors to him,
which were of pure gold. And when he entered, there sat his wife on a
throne, which was made of one piece of gold, and was quite two miles
high; and she wore a great golden crown that was three yards high, and
set with diamonds and carbuncles, and in one hand she had the sceptre,
and in the other the imperial orb; and on both sides of her stood
the yeomen of the guard in two rows, each being smaller than the one
before him, from the biggest giant, who was two miles high, to the
very smallest dwarf, just as big as my little finger. And before it
stood a number of princes and dukes.
Then the man went and stood among them, and said, "Wife, are you
Emperor now?" "Yes," said she, "now I am Emperor." Then he stood and
looked at her well; and when he had looked at her thus for some time,
be said, "Ah, wife, be content, now that you are Emperor." "Husband,"
said she, "why are you standing there? Now, I am Emperor, but I will
be Pope too; go to the Flounder."
"Alas, wife," said the man, "what will you not wish for? You cannot
be Pope; there is but one in Christendom; he cannot make you Pope."
"Husband," said she, "I will be Pope; go immediately, I must be Pope
this very day." "No, wife," said the man, "I do not like to say that
to him; that would not do; it is too much; the Flounder can't make you
Pope." "Husband," said she, "what nonsense! If he can make an emperor
he can make a pope. Go to him directly. I am Emperor and you are
nothing but my husband; will you go at once?"
Then he was afraid, and went; but he was quite faint, and shivered and
shook, and his knees and legs trembled. And a high wind blew over the
land, and the clouds flew, and toward evening all grew dark, and the
leaves fell from the trees, and the water rose and roared as if it
were boiling, and splashed upon the shore; and in the distance he saw
ships which were firing guns in their sore need, pitching and tossing
on the waves. And yet in the midst of the sky there was still a small
bit of blue, though on every side it was as red as in a heavy storm.
So, full of despair, he went and stood in much fear and said--
"Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will."
"Well, what does she want, then?" asked the Flounder. "Alas," said the
man, "she wants to be Pope." "Go to her then," said the Flounder; "she
is Pope already."
So he went, and when he got there, he saw what seemed to be a large
church surrounded by palaces. Inside, however, everything was lighted
up with thousands and thousands of candles, and his wife was clad in
gold, and she was sitting on a much higher throne, and had three great
golden crowns on, and around about her there was much ecclesiastical
splendor; and on both sides of her was a row of candles the largest of
which was as tall as the very tallest tower, down to the very smallest
kitchen candle, and all the emperors and kings were on their knees
before her, kissing her shoe. He pushed his way through the crowd.
"Wife," said the man, and looked attentively at her, "are you now
Pope?" "Yes," said she, "I am Pope." So he stood and looked at her,
and it was just as if he was looking at the bright sun. When he had
stood looking at her thus for a short time, he said, "Ah, wife, if you
are Pope, do let well alone!" But she looked as stiff as a post, and
did not move or show any signs of life. Then said he, "Wife, now that
you are Pope, be satisfied; you cannot become anything greater now."
"I will consider about that," said the woman. Thereupon they both
went to bed, but she was not satisfied, and greediness let her have no
sleep, for she was continually thinking what there was left for her to
be.
The man slept well and soundly, for he had run about a great deal
during the day; but the woman could not fall asleep at all, and flung
herself from one side to the other the whole night through, thinking
always what more was left for her to be, but unable to call to mind
anything else. At length the sun began to rise, and when the woman saw
the red of dawn, she sat up in bed and looked at it. And when, through
the window, she saw the sun thus rising, she said, "Cannot I, too,
order the sun and moon to rise?" "Husband," said she, poking him in
the ribs with her elbow, "wake up! go to the Flounder, for I wish
to be even as God is." The man was still half asleep, but he was
so horrified that he fell out of bed. He thought he must have heard
amiss, and rubbed his eyes, and said, "Alas, wife, what are you
saying?" "Husband," said she, "if I can't order the sun and moon to
rise, and have to look on and see the sun and moon rising, I can't
bear it. I shall not know what it is to have another happy hour,
unless I can make them rise myself."
Then she looked at him so terribly that a shudder ran over him, and
said, "Go at once; I wish to be like unto God." "Alas, wife," said the
man, falling on his knees before her, "the Flounder cannot do that; he
can make an emperor and a pope; I beseech you, go on as you are, and
be Pope." Then she fell into a rage, and her hair flew wildly about
her head, and she cried, "I will not endure this, I'll not bear it any
longer; wilt thou go?" Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a
madman. But outside a great storm was raging and blowing so hard that
he could scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled over, the
mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea, the sky was pitch
black, and it thundered and lightened, and the sea came in with black
waves as high as church-towers and mountains, and all with crests
of white foam at the top. Then he cried, but could not hear his own
words--
"Flounder, Flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I'd have her will"
"Well, what does she want, then?" asked the Flounder. "Alas," said
he, "she wants to be like unto God." "Go to her, and you will find
her back again in the dirty hovel." And there they are living still at
this very time.
_ERNST MORITZ ARNDT_
* * * * *
SONG OF THE FATHERLAND[9] (1813)
God, who gave iron, purposed ne'er
That man should be a slave;
Therefore the sabre, sword, and spear
In his right hand He gave.
Therefore He gave him fiery mood,
Fierce speech, and free-born breath,
That he might fearlessly the feud
Maintain through blood and death.
Therefore will we what God did say,
With honest truth, maintain--
And ne'er a fellow-creature slay,
A tyrant's pay to gain!
But he shall perish by stroke of brand
Who fighteth for sin and shame,
And not inherit the German land
With men of the German name.
O Germany! bright Fatherland!
O German love so true!
Thou sacred land--thou beauteous land--
We swear to thee anew!
Outlawed, each knave and coward shall
The crow and raven feed;
But we will to the battle all--
Revenge shall be our meed.
Flash forth, flash forth, whatever can,
To bright and flaming life!
Now, all ye Germans, man for man,
Forth to the holy strife!
Your hands lift upward to the sky--
Your hearts shall upward soar--
And man for man let each one cry,
Our slavery is o'er!
Let sound, let sound, whatever can
Trumpet and fife and drum!
This day our sabres, man for man,
To stain with blood, we come;
With hangman's and with coward's blood,
O glorious day of ire
That to all Germans soundeth good!--
Day of our great desire!
Let wave, let wave, whatever can--
Standard and banner wave!
Here will we purpose, man for man,
To grace a hero's grave.
Advance, ye brave ranks, hardily--
Your banners wave on high;
We'll gain us freedom's victory,
Or freedom's death we'll die!
[Illustration: ERNST MORITZ ARNDT Julius Röting]
* * * * *
UNION SONG[10] (1814)
This blessed hour we are united,
Of German men a mighty choir,
And from the lips of each, delighted,
Our praying souls to heaven aspire;
With high and sacred awe abounding
We join in solemn thoughts today,
And so our hearts should be resounding
In clear harmonic song and play.
To whom shall foremost thanks be given?
To God, the great, so long concealed,
Who, when the cloud of shame was riven,
Himself in flames to us revealed,
Who, stubborn foes with lightning felling,
Restored to us our strength of yore,
Who, on the stars in power dwelling,
Reigns ever and forevermore.
Who should our second wish be hearing?
The majesty of Fatherland--
Destroyed be those who still are sneering!
Hail them who with it fall and stand!
By virtue winning admiration,
Beloved for honesty and might,
Long live through centuries our nation
As strong in honor and in might!
The third is German manhood's treasure--
Ring out it shall, with clearness mete!
For Freedom is the German pleasure,
And Germans step to Freedom's beat.
Be life and death by her inspirèd--
Of German hearts, oh, longing bright!
And death for Freedom's sake desirèd
Is German honor and delight.
The fourth--for noble consecration
Now lift on high both heart and hand!
Old loyalty within our nation
And German faith forever stand!--
These virtues shall, our weal assuring,
Remain our union's shield and stay;
Our manly word will be enduring
Until the world shall pass away.
Now let the final chord be ringing
In jubilee--stand not apart!
Let sound our mighty, joyful singing
From lip to lip, from heart to heart!
The weal from which no devils bar us,
The word that doth our league infold--
The bliss which tyrants cannot mar us
We must believe in, we must hold!
_THEODOR KÖRNER_
* * * * *
MEN AND KNAVES[11] (1813)
The storm is out; the land is roused;
Where is the coward who sits well-housed?
Fie, on thee, boy, disguised in curls,
Behind the stove, 'mong gluttons and girls!
A graceless, worthless wight thou must be;
No German maid desires thee,
No German song inspires thee,
No German Rhine-wine fires thee.
Forth in the van,
Man by man,
Swing the battle-sword who can!
When we stand watching, the livelong night,
Through piping storms, till morning light,
Thou to thy downy bed canst creep,
And there in dreams of rapture sleep.
_Chorus_.
When, hoarse and shrill, the trumpet's blast,
Like the thunder of God, makes our hearts beat fast,
Thou in the theatre lov'st to appear,
Where trills and quavers tickle the ear.
_Chorus_.
When the glare of noonday scorches the brain,
When our parched lips seek water in vain,
Thou canst make the champagne corks fly,
At the groaning tables of luxury.
_Chorus_.
When we, as we rush to the strangling fight,
Send home to our true loves a long "Good night,"
Thou canst hie thee where love is sold,
And buy thy pleasure with paltry gold.
_Chorus_.
When lance and bullet come whistling by,
And death in a thousand shapes draws nigh,
Thou canst sit at thy cards, and kill
King, queen, and knave, with thy spadille.
_Chorus_.
If on the red field our bell should toll,
Then welcome be death to the patriot's soul.
Thy pampered flesh shall quake at its doom,
And crawl in silk to a hopeless tomb.
A pitiful exit thine shall be;
No German maid shall weep for thee,
No German song shall they sing for thee,
No German goblets shall ring for thee.
Forth in the van,
Man for man,
Swing the battle-sword who can!
* * * * *
LÜTZOW'S WILD BAND[12] (1813)
What gleams through the woods in the morning sun?
Hear it nearer and nearer draw!
It winds in and out in columns dun,
And the trumpet-notes on the roused winds run,
And they startle the soul with awe.
Should you of the comrades black demand--
That is Lützow's wild and untamed band.
What passes swift through the darksome glade,
And roves o'er the mountains all?
It crouches in nightly ambuscade;
The hurrah breaks round the foe dismayed,
And the Frankish sergeants fall.
Should you of the rangers black demand--
That is Lützow's wild and audacious band.
Where the vineyards flourish, there roars the Rhine;
There the tyrant thought him secure;
Then by thunder-crash and lightning-shine
In the waters plunges the fighting line;
Of the hostile bank makes sure.
Should you of the swimmers black demand--
That is Lützow's wild and foolhardy band.
There down in the valley what clamorous fight!
What clangor of bloody swords!
Fierce-hearted horsemen wage the fight,
And the spark of freedom's at last alight,
Flaming red the heavens towards.
Should you of the horsemen black demand--
That is Lützow's wild and intrepid band.
Who with death-rattle there bid the day farewell
'Mid the moans of prostrate foes?
Of the hand of death the drawn features tell,
Yet the dauntless hearts triumphant swell,
For his Fatherland's safe each knows!
Should you of the black-clad fallen demand--
That is Lützow's wild and invincible band.
The wild, fierce band and the Teuton band,
For all tyrants' blood athirst!--
So you who would mourn us, be not unmanned;
For the morning dawns, and we freed our land,
Though to free it we won death first!
Then tell, at your grandsons' rapt demand:
That was Lützow's wild and unconquered band!
[Illustration: THEODOR KÖRNER]
* * * * *
PRAYER DURING BATTLE[13](1813)
Father, I call to thee.
The roaring artillery's clouds thicken round me,
The hiss and the glare of the loud bolts confound me.
Ruler of battles, I call on thee
O Father, lead thou me!
O Father, lead thou me;
To victory, to death, dread Commander, O guide me;
The dark valley brightens when thou art beside me;
Lord, as thou wilt, so lead thou me.
God, I acknowledge thee.
God, I acknowledge thee;
When the breeze through the dry leaves of autumn is moaning,
When the thunder-storm of battle is groaning,
Fount of mercy, in each I acknowledge thee.
O Father, bless thou me!
O Father, bless thou me;
I trust in thy mercy, whate'er may befall me;
'Tis thy word that hath sent me; that word can recall me.
Living or dying, O bless thou me!
Father, I honor thee.
Father, I honor thee;
Not for earth's hoards or honors we here are contending;
All that is holy our swords are defending;
Then falling, and conquering, I honor thee.
God, I repose in thee.
God, I repose in thee;
When the thunders of death my soul are greeting,
When the gashed veins bleed, and the life is fleeting,
In thee, my God, I repose in thee.
Father, I call on thee.
_MAXIMILIAN GOTTFRIED VON SCHENKENDORF_
* * * * *
THE MOTHER TONGUE[14] (1814)
Mother tongue, oh, tongue most dear,
Sweet and gladsome to mine ear!
Word that first I heard, endearing
Word of love, first timid sound
That I stammered--still I'm hearing
Thee within my soul profound.
Oh, my heart will ever grieve
When my Fatherland I leave,
For in foreign tongues repeating
Words of strangers, I lose cheer.
Oh, they seem not like a greeting,
And I'll never hold them dear.
Speech so wonderful to hear--
How thou ringest pure and clear!
Though thy beauty hath enthralled me,
Still I'll deepen my delight,
Awed, as if my fathers called me
From the grave's eternal night.
Ring on ever, tongue of old,
Tongue of lovers, heroes bold!
Rise, old song, though lost for ages,
From thy secret tomb, and go
Live again in sacred pages,
Set all hearts once more aglow.
Breath of God is everywhere,
Custom sacred here as there.
Yet when I give thanks, am praying,
A beloved heart would seek,
When my highest thoughts I'm saying--
Then my mother tongue I speak.
[Illustration: MAXIMILIAN GOTTFRIED VON SCHENKENDORF]
* * * * *
SPRING GREETING TO THE FATHERLAND[15] (1814)
Fatherland, thy pleasures greet me
After bondage, war's distress!
I must steep my soul completely
Here in all thy gorgeousness.
Where the oak-trees murmur mildly
With their crowns to heaven raised,
Mighty streams are roaring wildly--
There the German land be praised.
From the Rhinefall, all delighted,
I have walked, from Danube's spring;
Mildly, in my soul benighted
Love-stars rose, illumining;
Now I would descend, and brightly
Radiate a joyous shine
Into Neckar's valleys sprightly,
O'er the blue and silver Main.
Onward fly, my message, bringing
Freedom's greeting evermore,
Far away thou shalt be ringing
By my home on Memel's shore.
Where the German tongue is spoken,
Hearts have fought to make her free--
Fought right gladly--there unbroken
Stays our sacred Germany.
All with sunlight seems a-blazing,
All things seem adorned with green--
Pastures where the herds are grazing,
Hills where ripening grapes are seen.
Such a spring time has not graced thee,
Fatherland, for thousand years;
Glory of thy fathers faced thee
Once in dreams, and now appears.
Once more weapons must be wielded;
Go, a spirit-fray begin,
Till the latest foe has yielded--
He who threatens you within.
Passions vile ye should be blighting,
Hate, suspicion, envy, greed--
Then take, after heavy fighting,
German hearts, the rest ye need.
Then shall all men be possessing
Honor, humbleness, and might,
And thus only can the blessing
Sent our monarch shine with right.
All the ancient sins must perish--
In the God-sent deluge all,
And the heritage we cherish
To a worthy heir must fall.
God has blessed the grain that's growing
And the vineyard's fruit no less;
Men with hunter's joy are glowing;
In the homes reigns happiness.
And our freedom's sure foundation,
Pious longing, fills the breast;
Love that charms in every nation
In our German land is best.
Ye that are in castles dwelling,
Or in towns that grace our soil,
Farmers that in harvests swelling
Reap the fruits of German toil--
German brothers dear, united,
Mark my words both old and new!
That our land may stay unblighted,
Keep this concord, and be true!
* * * * *
FREEDOM[16] (1815)
Freedom that I love,
Shining in my heart,
Come now from above,
Angel that thou art.
Wilt thou ne'er appear
To the world oppressed?
With thy grace and cheer
Only stars are blessed?
In the forest gay
When the trees are green,
'Neath the blooming spray,
Freedom, thou art seen.
Oh, what dear delight!
Music fills the air,
And thy secret might
Thrills us everywhere,
When the rustling boughs
Friendly greetings send,
When we lovers' vows
Looks and kisses spend.
But the heart aspires
Upward evermore,
And our high desires
Ever sky-ward soar.
From his simple kind
Comes my rustic child,
Shows his heart and mind
To the world beguiled;
For him gardens bloom,
For him fields have grown,
Even in, the gloom
Of a world of stone.
Where in that man's breast
Glows a God-sent flame
Who with loyal zest
Loves the ancient name,
Where the men unite
Valiantly to face
Foes of honor's right--
There dwells freedom's race.
Ramparts, brazen doors
Still may bar the light,
Yet the spirit soars
Into regions bright;
For the fathers' grave,
For the church to fall,
And for dear ones--brave,
True at freedom's call--
That indeed is light,
Glowing rosy-red;
Heroes' cheeks grow bright
And more fair when dead.
Down to us, oh, guide
Heaven's grace, we pray!
In our hearts reside--
German hearts--to stay!
Freedom sweet and fair,
Trusting, void of fear,
German nature e'er
Was to thee most clear.
_LUDWIG UHLAND_
* * * * *
THE CHAPEL[17] (1805)
Yonder chapel, on the mountain,
Looks upon a vale of joy;
There, below, by moss and fountain,
Gaily sings the herdsman's boy.
Hark! Upon the breeze descending,
Sound of dirge and funeral bell;
And the boy, his song suspending,
Listens, gazing from the dell.
Homeward to the grave they're bringing
Forms that graced the peaceful vale;
Youthful herdsman, gaily singing!
Thus they'll chant thy funeral wail.
* * * * *
THE SHEPHERD'S SONG ON THE LORD'S DAY[18] (1805)
The Lord's own day is here!
Alone I kneel on this broad plain;
A matin bell just sounds; again
'Tis silence, far and near.
Here kneel I on the sod;
O deep amazement, strangely felt!
As though, unseen, vast numbers knelt
And prayed with me to God!
Yon heav'n afar and near--
So bright, so glorious seems its cope
As though e'en now its gates would ope--
The Lord's own day is here!
[Illustration: LUDWIG UHLAND]
* * * * *
THE CASTLE BY THE SEA[19] (1805)
Hast thou seen that lordly castle,
That castle by the sea?
Golden and red above it
The clouds float gorgeously.
And fain it would stoop downward
To the mirrored lake below;
And fain it would soar upward
In the evening's crimson glow.
Well have I seen that castle,
That castle by the sea,
And the moon above it standing,
And the mist rise solemnly.
The winds and the waves of ocean--
Had they a merry chime?
Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers,
The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?
The winds and the waves of ocean,
They rested quietly;
But I heard in the gale a sound of wail,
And tears came to mine eye.
And sawest thou on the turrets
The king and his royal bride,
And the wave of their crimson mantles,
And the golden crown of pride?
Led they not forth, in rapture,
A beauteous maiden there,
Resplendent as the morning sun,
Beaming with golden hair!
Well saw I the ancient parents,
Without the crown of pride;
They were moving slow, in weeds of woe--
No maiden was by their side!
* * * * *
SONG OF THE MOUNTAIN BOY[20] (1806)
The mountain shepherd-boy am I;
The castles all below me spy.
The sun sends me his earliest beam,
Leaves me his latest, lingering gleam.
I am the boy of the mountain!
The mountain torrent's home is here,
Fresh from the rock I drink it clear;
As out it leaps with furious force,
I stretch my arms and stop its course.
I am the boy of the mountain!
I claim the mountain for my own;
In vain the winds around me moan;
From north to south let tempests brawl--
My song shall swell above them all.
I am the boy of the mountain!
Thunder and lightning below me lie,
Yet here I stand in upper sky;
I know them well, and cry, "Harm not
My father's lowly, peaceful cot."
I am the boy of the mountain!
But when I hear the alarm-bell sound,
When watch-fires gleam from the mountains round,
Then down I go and march along,
And swing my sword, and sing my song.
I am the boy of the mountain!
[Illustration: THE VILLA BY THE SEA From the Painting by Arnold Böcklin]
* * * * *
DEPARTURE[21] (1806)
What jingles and carols along the street!
Fling open your casements, damsels sweet!
The prentice' friends, they are bearing
The boy on his far wayfaring.
'Mid fluttering ribbons and tossing caps,
Full merry the rabble huzzas and claps;
But the boy regards not the token--
He walks like one heartbroken.
Full clear clinks the wine-can, full red gleams the wine
"Drink deep and drink deeper, dear brother mine!"
"Oh, have done with the red wine of parting
That burns me within with its smarting!"
And outside from the cottage, last of all,
A maiden peeps out and her tear-drops fall,
Yet her tear-drops to none she discloses
But forget-me-nots and roses.
And outside by the cottage, last of all,
The boy glances up at a casement small,
And glances down without greeting.
'Neath his hand his heart is beating.
"What, brother! Art lacking a bright nosegay?
See yonder--the beckoning, blossomy spray!
God save thee, thou prettiest sweeting!
Drop down now a nosegay for greeting!"
"Nay, brothers, pass yonder casement by.
No prettiest sweeting like her have I.
In the sun those blossoms would wither;
The wind it would blow them thither."
So farther and farther with shout and song!
And the maiden listens and harkens long
"Ah, me! he is flown now beyond me--
The boy I have loved so fondly!
And here I stay, with my lonely lot,
With roses, ah!--and forget-me-not,
And he whose heart I'd be sharing--
He is gone on his far wayfaring!"
* * * * *
FAREWELL[22] (1807)
Farewell, farewell! From thee
Today, love, must I sever.
One kiss, one kiss give me,
Ere I quit thee forever!
One blossom from yon tree
O give to me, I pray!
No fruit, no fruit for me!
So long I may not stay.
[Illustration: LEAVING AT DAWN]
* * * * *
THE HOSTESS' DAUGHTER[23] (1809)
Three students had cross'd o'er the Rhine's dark tide;
At the door of a hostel they turned aside.
"Hast thou, Dame hostess, good ale and wine
And where is thy daughter, so sweet and fine?"
"My ale and wine are cool and clear;
On her death-bed lieth my daughter dear."
And when to the chamber they made their way,
In a sable coffin the damsel lay.
The first--the veil from her face he took,
And gazed upon her with mournful look:
"Alas! fair maiden--didst thou still live,
To thee my love would I henceforth give!"
The second--he lightly replaced the shroud,
Then round he turned him, and wept aloud:
"Thou liest, alas I on thy death-bed here;
I loved thee fondly for many a year!"
The third--he lifted again the veil,
And gently he kissed those lips so pale:
"I love thee now, as I loved of yore,
And thus will I love thee forevermore!"
* * * * *
THE GOOD COMRADE[24] (1809)
I had a gallant comrade,
No better e'er was tried;
The drum beat loud to battle--
Beside me, to its rattle,
He marched, with equal stride.
A bullet flies toward us us--
"Is that for me or thee?"
It struck him, passing o'er me;
I see his corpse before me
As 'twere a part of me!
And still, while I am loading,
His outstretched hand I view;
"Not now--awhile we sever;
But, when we live forever,
Be still my comrade true!"
* * * * *
THE WHITE HART[25] (1811)
Three huntsmen forth to the greenwood went;
To hunt the white hart was their intent.
They laid them under a green fir-tree,
And a singular vision befell those three.
THE FIRST HUNTSMAN
I dreamt I arose and beat on the bush,
When forth came rushing the stag--hush, hush!
THE SECOND
As with baying of hound he came rushing along,
I fired my gun at his hide--bing, bang!
THE THIRD
And when the stag on the ground I saw,
I merrily wound my horn--trara!
Conversing thus did the huntsmen lie,
When lo! the white hart came bounding by;
And before the huntsmen had noted him well,
He was up and away over mountain and dell!--
Hush, hush!--bing, bang!--trara!
* * * * *
THE LOST CHURCH[26] (1812)
When one into the forest goes,
A music sweet the spirit blesses;
But whence it cometh no one knows,
Nor common rumor even guesses.
From the lost Church those strains must swell
That come on all the winds resounding;
The path to it now none can tell,
That path with pilgrims once abounding.
As lately, in the forest, where
No beaten path could be discover'd,
All lost in thought, I wander'd far,
Upward to God my spirit hover'd.
When all was silent round me there,
Then in my ears that music sounded;
The higher, purer, rose my prayer,
The nearer, fuller, it resounded.
Upon my heart such peace there fell,
Those strains with all my thoughts so blended,
That how it was I cannot tell
That I so high that hour ascended.
It seem'd a hundred years and more
That I had been thus lost in dreaming,
When, all earth's vapors op'ning o'er,
A free large place stood, brightly beaming.
The sky it was so blue and bland,
The sun it was so full and glowing,
As rose a minster vast and grand,
The golden light all round it flowing.
The clouds on which it rested seem'd
To bear it up like wings of fire;
Piercing the heavens, so I dream'd,
Sublimely rose its lofty spire.
The bell--what music from it roll'd!
Shook, as it peal'd, the trembling tower;
Rung by no mortal hand, but toll'd
By some unseen, unearthly power.
The selfsame power from Heaven thrill'd
My being to its utmost centre,
As, all with fear and gladness fill'd,
Beneath the lofty dome I enter.
I stood within the solemn pile--
Words cannot tell with what amazement,
As saints and martyrs seem'd to smile
Down on me from each gorgeous casement.
I saw the picture grow alive,
And I beheld a world of glory,
Where sainted men and women strive
And act again their godlike story.
Before the altar knelt I low--
Love and devotion only feeling,
While Heaven's glory seem'd to glow,
Depicted on the lofty ceiling.
Yet when again I upward gazed,
The mighty dome in twain was shaken,
And Heaven's gate wide open blazed,
And every veil away was taken.
What majesty I then beheld,
My heart with adoration swelling;
What music all my senses fill'd,
Beyond the organ's power of telling,
In words can never be exprest;
Yet for that bliss who longs sincerely,
O let him to the music list,
That in the forest soundeth clearly!
* * * * *
CHARLEMAGNE'S VOYAGE[27] (1812)
With comrades twelve upon the main
King Charles set out to sail.
The Holy Land he hoped to gain,
But drifted in a gale.
Then spake Sir Roland, hero brave:
"Well I can fight and shield;
Yet neither stormy wind nor wave
Will to my weapon yield."
Sir Holger spoke, from Denmark's strand:
"The harp I feign would play;
But what avails the music bland
When tempests roaring sway!"
Sir Oliver was not too glad;
Upon his sword he'd stare:
"For my own weal 'twere not so bad,
I grieve, for good Old Clare."
Said wicked Ganilon with gall
(He said it 'neath his breath):
"The devil come and take ye all--
Were I but spared this death!"
Archbishop Turpin deeply sighed:
"The knights of God are we.
O come, our Savior, be our guide,
And lead us o'er the sea!"
Then spake Sir Richard Fearless stern:
"Ye demons there in hell,
I served ye many a goodly turn,
Now serve ye me as well!"
"My counsel often has been heard,"
Sir Naimes did remark.
"Fresh water, though, and helpful word
Are rare upon a bark."
Then spake Sir Riol, old and gray:
"An aged knight am I;
And they shall lay my corpse away
Where it is good and dry."
And then Sir Guy began to sing--
He was a courtly knight:
"Feign would I have a birdie's wing,
And to my love take flight!"
Then Count Garein, the noble, said:
"God, danger from us keep!
I'd rather drink the wine so red
Than water in the deep."
Sir Lambert spake, a sprightly youth:
"May God behold our state!
I'd rather eat good fish, forsooth,
Than be myself a bait."
Then quoth Sir Gottfried: "Be it so,
I heed not how I fare;
Whatever I must undergo,
My brothers all would share."
But at the helm King Charles sat by,
And never said a word,
And steered the ship with steadfast eye
Till no more tempest stirred.
* * * * *
FREE ART[28] (1812)
Thou, whom song was given, sing
In the German poets' wood!
When all boughs with music ring--
Then is life and pleasure good.
Nay, this art doth not belong
To a small and haughty band;
Scattered are the seeds of song
All about the German land.
Music set thy passions free
From the heart's confining cage;
Let thy love like murmurs be,
And like thunder-storm thy rage!
Singest thou not all thy days,
Joy of youth should make thee sing.
Nightingales pour forth their lays
In the blooming months of spring!
Though in books they hold not fast
What the hour to thee imparts,
Leaves unto the breezes cast,
To be seized by youthful hearts!
Fare thou well, thou secret lore:
Necromancy, Alchemy!
Formulas shall bind no more,
And our art is poesy.
Names we deem but empty air;
Spirits we revere alone;
Though we honor masters rare.
Art is free--it is our own!
Not in haunts of marble chill,
Temples drear where ancients trod--
Nay, in oaks on woody hill,
Lives and moves the German God.
* * * * *
TAILLEFER[29] (1812)
Duke William of the Normans spoke unto his servants all:
"Who is it sings so sweetly in the court and in the hall?
Who sings from early morn till the house is still at night
So sweetly that he fills my heart with laughter and delight?"
"'Tis Taillefer," they answered him, "so joyously that sings
Within the courtyard, as the wheel above the well he swings,
And when the fire upon the hearth he stirs to burn more bright,
And when he rises to his toil or lays him down at night."
Then spoke the Duke, "In him I trow I have a faithful knave--
This Taillefer that serves me here, so loyal and so brave;
He turns the wheel and stirs the fire with willing, sturdy arm,
And, best of all, with blithesome song he knows my heart to charm."
Then out spake lusty Taillefer, "Ah, lord, if I were free,
Far better would I serve thee then, and gladly sing to thee.
How on my stately charger would I serve thee in the field,
How sing before thee cheerily, with clang of sword and shield!"
The days went by, and Taillefer rode out as rides a knight
Upon a prancing charger borne, a gay and gallant sight;
And from the tower looked down on him Duke William's sister fair,
And softly murmured, "By my troth, a stately knight goes there!"
When as he rode before the tower, and spied her harkening,
Now sang he like a driving storm, now like a breeze of spring;
She cried, "To hear that wondrous song is of all joys the best--
The very stones they tremble, and the heart within my breast."
And now the Duke has called his men and crossed the salt sea-foam;
With gallant knights and vassals bold to England he has come.
And as he sprang from out the ship, he slipped upon the strand,
And "By this token, thus," he cried, "I seize a subject land!"
And now on Hastings field arrayed, the host for fight prepare;
Before the Duke reins up his horse the valiant Taillefer:
"If I have sung and blown the fire for many a weary year,
And since for other years have borne the knightly shield and spear,
"If I have sung and served thee well, and praises won from thee,
First as a lowly knave and then a warrior, bold and free,
Today I claim my guerdon just, that all the host may know--
To ride the foremost to the field, strike first against the foe!"
So Taillefer rode on before the glittering Norman line
Upon his stately steed, and waved a sword of temper fine;
Above the embattled plain his song rang all the tumult o'er--
Of Roland's knightly deeds he sang and many a hero more.
And as the noble song of old with tempest-might swelled out,
The banners waved and knights pressed on with war-cry and with shout;
And every heart among the host throbbed prouder still and higher,
And still through all sang Taillefer, and blew the battle-fire.
Then forward, lance in rest, against the waiting foe he dashed,
And at the shock an English knight from out the saddle crashed;
Anon he swung his sword and struck a grim and grisly blow,
And on the ground beneath his feet an English knight lay low.
The Norman host his prowess saw, and followed him full fain;
With joyful shouts and clang of shields the whole field rang again,
And shrill and fast the arrows sped, and swords made merry play--
Until at last King Harold fell, his stubborn carles gave way.
The Duke his banner planted high upon the bloody plain,
And pitched his tent a conqueror amid the heaps of slain;
Then with his captains sat at meat, the wine-cup in his hand,
Upon his head the royal crown of all the English land.
"Come hither, valiant Taillefer, and drink a cup with me!
Full oft thy song has soothed my grief, made merrier my glee;
But all my life I still shall hear the battle-shout that pealed
Above the noise of clashing arms today on Hastings field!"
* * * * *
SUABIAN LEGEND[30] (1814)
When Emperor Redbeard with his band
Came marching through the Holy Land,
He had to lead, the way to seek,
His noble force o'er mountains bleak.
Of bread there rose a painful need,
Though stones were plentiful indeed,
And many a German rider fine
Forgot the taste of mead and wine.
The horses drooped from meagre fare,
The rider had to hold his mare.
There was a knight from Suabian land
Of noble build and mighty hand;
His little horse was faint and ill,
He dragged it by the bridle still;
His steed he never would forsake,
Though his own life should be at stake.
And so the horseman had to stay
Behind the band a little way.
Then all at once, right in his course,
Pranced fifty Turkish men on horse.
And straight a swarm of arrows flew;
Their spears as well the riders threw.
Our Suabian brave felt no dismay,
And calmly marched along his way.
His shield was stuck with arrows o'er,
He sneered and looked about--no more;
Till one, whom all this pastime bored,
Above him swung a crooked sword.
The German's blood begins to boil,
He aims the Turkish steed to foil,
And off he knocks with hit so neat
The Turkish charger's two fore-feet.
And now that he has felled the horse,
He grips his sword with double force
And swings it on the rider's crown
And splits him to the saddle down;
He hews the saddle into bits,
And e'en the charger's back he splits.
See, falling to the right and left,
Half of a Turk that has been cleft!
The others shudder at the sight
And hie away in frantic flight,
And each one feels, with gruesome dread,
That he is split through trunk and head.
A band of Christians, left behind,
Came down the road, his work to find;
And they admired, one by one,
The deed our hero bold had done.
From these the Emperor heard it all,
And bade his men the Suabian call,
Then spake: "Who taught thee, honored knight,
With hits like those you dealt, to fight?"
Our hero said, without delay
"These hits are just the Suabian way.
Throughout the realm all men admit,
The Suabians always make a hit."
* * * * *
THE BLIND KING[31] (1804, 1814)
Why stands uncovered that northern host
High on the seaboard there?
Why seeks the old blind king the coast,
With his white, wild-fluttering hair?
He, leaning on his staff the while,
His bitter grief outpours,
Till across the bay the rocky isle
Sounds from its caverned shores.
"From the dungeon-rock, thou robber, bring
My daughter back again!
Her gentle voice, her harp's sweet string
Soothed an old father's pain.
From the dance along the green shore
Thou hast borne her o'er the wave;
Eternal shame light on thy head;
Mine trembles o'er the grave."
Forth from his cavern, at the word,
The robber comes, all steeled,
Swings in the air his giant sword,
And strikes his sounding shield.
"A goodly guard attends thee there;
Why suffered they the wrong?
Is there none will be her champion
Of all that mighty throng?"
Yet from that host there comes no sound;
They stand unmoved as stone;
The blind king seems to gaze around;
Am I all, all alone?"
"Not all alone!" His youthful son
Grasps his right hand so warm--
"Grant me to meet this vaunting foe!
Heaven's might inspires my arm."
"O son! it is a giant foe;
There's none will take thy part;
Yet by this hand's warm grasp, I know
Thine is a manly heart.
Here, take the trusty battle-sword--
'Twas the old minstrel's prize;--
If thou art slain, far down the flood
Thy poor old father dies!"
And hark! a skiff glides swiftly o'er,
With plashing, spooming sound;
The king stands listening on the shore;
'Tis silent all around--
Till soon across the bay is borne
The sound of shield and sword,
And battle-cry, and clash, and clang,
And crashing blows, are heard.
With trembling joy then cried the king:
"Warrior! what mark you? Tell!
'Twas my good sword; I heard it ring;
I know its tone right well."
"The robber falls; a bloody meed
His daring crime hath won;
Hail to thee, first of heroes! hail!
Thou monarch's worthy son!"
Again 'tis silent all around;
Listens the king once more;
"I hear across the bay the sound
As of a plashing oar."
Yes, it is they!--They come!--They come--
Thy son, with spear and shield,
And thy daughter fair, with golden hair,
The sunny-bright Gunild."
"Welcome!" exclaims the blind old man,
From the rock high o'er the wave;
"Now my old age is blest again;
Honored shall be my grave.
Thou, son, shalt lay the sword I wore
Beside the blind old king.
And thou, Gunilda, free once more,
My funeral song shalt sing."
* * * * *
THE MINSTREL'S CURSE[32] (1814)
Once in olden times was standing
A castle, high and grand,
Broad glancing in the sunlight,
Far over sea and land.
And round were fragrant gardens,
A rich and blooming crown;
And fountains, playing in them,
In rainbow brilliance shone.
There a haughty king was seated,
In lands and conquests great;
Pale and awful was his countenance,
As on his throne he sate;
For what he thinks, is terror,
And what he looks, is wrath,
And what he speaks, is torture,
And what he writes, is death.
And 'gainst a marble pillar
He shiver'd it in twain;
And thus his curse he shouted,
Till the castle rang again:
"Woe, woe, thou haughty castle,
With all thy gorgeous halls!
Sweet string or song be sounded
No more within thy walls.
No, sighs alone, and wailing,
And the coward steps of slaves!
Already round thy towers
The avenging spirit raves!
"Woe, woe, ye fragrant gardens,
With all your fair May light!
Look on this ghastly countenance,
And wither at the sight!
Let all your flowers perish!
Be all your fountains dry!
Henceforth a horrid wilderness,
Deserted, wasted, lie!
"Woe, woe, thou wretched murderer,
Thou curse of minstrelsy!
Thy struggles for a bloody fame,
All fruitless shall they be.
Thy name shall be forgotten,
Lost in eternal death,
Dissolving into empty air
Like a dying man's last breath!"
The old man's curse is utter'd,
And Heaven above hath heard.
Those walls have fallen prostrate
At the minstrel's mighty word.
Of all that vanish'd splendor
Stands but one column tall;
And that, already shatter'd,
Ere another night may fall.
Around, instead of gardens,
In a desert heathen land,
No tree its shade dispenses,
No fountains cool the sand.
The king's name, it has vanish'd;
His deeds no songs rehearse;
Departed and forgotten--
This is the minstrel's curse.
* * * * *
THE LUCK OF EDENHALL[33] (1834)
Of Edenhall the youthful lord
Bids sound the festal trumpets' call;
He rises at the banquet board,
And cries, 'mid the drunken revelers all,
"Now bring me the Luck of Edenhall!"
The butler hears the words with pain--
The house's oldest seneschal--
Takes slow from its silken cloth again
The drinking glass of crystal tall;
They call it the Luck of Edenhall.
Then said the lord, "This glass to praise,
Fill with red wine from Portugal!"
The graybeard with trembling hand obeys;
A purple light shines over all;
It beams from the Luck of Edenhall.
Then speaks the lord, and waves it light--
"This glass of flashing crystal tall
Gave to my sires the Fountain-Sprite;
She wrote in it, 'If this glass doth fall,
Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!'"
"'Twas right a goblet the fate should be
Of the joyous race of Edenhall!
We drink deep draughts right willingly;
And willingly ring, with merry call,
Kling! klang! to the Luck of Edenhall!"
First rings it deep, and full, and mild,
Like to the song of a nightingale;
Then like the roar of a torrent wild;
Then mutters, at last, like the thunder's fall,
The glorious Luck of Edenhall.
"For its keeper, takes a race of might
The fragile goblet of crystal tall;
It has lasted longer than is right;
Kling! klang!--with a harder blow than all
We'll try the Luck of Edenhall!"
As the goblet, ringing, flies apart,
Suddenly cracks the vaulted hall;
And through the rift the flames upstart;
The guests in dust are scattered all
With the breaking Luck of Edenhall!
In storms the foe with fire and sword!
He in the night had scaled the wall;
Slain by the sword lies the youthful lord,
But holds in his hand the crystal tall,
The shattered Luck of Edenhall.
On the morrow the butler gropes alone,
The graybeard, in the desert hall;
He seeks his lord's burnt skeleton;
He seeks in the dismal ruin's fall
The shards of the Luck of Edenhall.
"The stone wall," saith he, "doth fall aside;
Down must the stately columns fall;
Glass is this earth's Luck and Pride;
In atoms shall fall this earthly hall,
One day, like the Luck of Edenhall!"
* * * * *
ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD[34] (1859)
You came, you went, as angels go,
A fleeting guest within our land.
Whence and where to?--We only know:
Forth from God's hand into God's hand.
_JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF_
* * * * *
THE BROKEN RING[35] (1810)
Down in yon cool valley
I hear a mill-wheel go:
Alas! my love has left me,
Who once dwelt there below.
A ring of gold she gave me,
And vowed she would be true;
The vow long since was broken,
The gold ring snapped in two.
I would I were a minstrel,
To rove the wide world o'er,
And sing afar my measures,
And rove from door to door;
Or else a soldier, flying
Deep into furious fight,
By silent camp-fires lying
A-field in gloomy night.
Hear I the mill-wheel going:
I know not what I will;
'Twere best if I were dying--
Then all were calm and still.
[Illustration: JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF]
* * * * *
MORNING PRAYER[36] (1833)
O silence, wondrous and profound!
O'er earth doth solitude still reign;
The woods alone incline their heads,
As if the Lord walked o'er the plain.
I feel new life within me glow;
Where now is my distress and care?
Here in the blush of waking morn,
I blush at yesterday's despair.
To me, a pilgrim, shall the world,
With all its joy and sorrows, be
But as a bridge that leads, O Lord,
Across the stream of time to Thee.
And should my song woo worldly gifts,
The base rewards of vanity--
Dash down my lyre! I'll hold my peace
Before thee to eternity.
FROM THE LIFE OF A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING (1826)
BY JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF TRANSLATED BY MRS. A.L.W. WISTER
CHAPTER I
The wheel of my father's mill was once more turning and whirring
merrily, the melting snow trickled steadily from the roof, the
sparrows chirped and hopped about, as I, taking great delight in the
warm sunshine, sat on the door-step and rubbed my eyes to rid them
of sleep. Then my father made his appearance; he had been busy in the
mill since daybreak, and his nightcap was all awry as he said to me--
You Good-for-nothing! There you sit sunning yourself, and stretching
yourself till your bones crack, leaving me to do all the work alone. I
can keep you here no longer. Spring is at hand. Off with you into the
world and earn your own bread!"
"Well," said I, "all right; if I am a Good-for-nothing, I will go
forth into the world and make my fortune." In fact, I was very glad to
have my father speak thus, for I myself had been thinking of starting
on my travels; the yellow-hammer, which all through the autumn and
winter had been chirping sadly at our window, "Farmer, hire me;
farmer, hire me," was, now that the lovely spring weather had set in,
once more piping cheerily from the old tree, "Farmer, nobody wants
your work." So I went into the house and took down from the wall my
fiddle, on which I could play quite skilfully; my father gave me a
few pieces of money to set me on my way; and I sauntered off along
the village street. I was filled with secret joy as I saw all my old
acquaintances and comrades right and left going to their work digging
and ploughing, just as they had done yesterday and the day before,
and so on, whilst I was roaming out into the wide world. I called
out "Good-by!" to the poor people on all sides, but no one took much
notice of me. A perpetual Sabbath seemed to reign in my soul, and when
I got out among the fields I took out my dear fiddle and played and
sang, as I walked along the country road--
"The favored ones, the loved of Heaven,
God sends to roam the world at will;
His wonders to their gaze are given
By field and forest, stream and hill.
"The dullards who at home are staying
Are not refreshed by morning's ray;
They grovel, earth-born calls obeying,
And petty cares beset their day.
"The little brooks o'er rocks are springing,
The lark's gay carol fills the air;
Why should not I with them be singing
A joyous anthem free from care?
"I wander on, in God confiding,
For all are His, wood, field, and fell;
O'er earth and skies He, still presiding,
For me will order all things well."
As I was looking around, a fine traveling-carriage drove along very
near me; it had probably been just behind me for some time without
my perceiving it, so filled with melody had I been, for it was going
quite slowly, and two elegant ladies had their heads out of the
window, listening. One was especially beautiful, and younger than the
other, but both pleased me extremely. When I stopped singing the elder
ordered the coachman to stop his horses, and accosted me with great
condescension: "Aha, my merry lad, you know how to sing very pretty
songs!" I, nothing loath, replied, "Please Your Grace, I know some
far prettier." "And where are you going so early in the morning?" she
asked. I was ashamed to confess that I did not myself know, and so I
said, boldly, "To Vienna." The two ladies then talked together in a
strange tongue which I did not understand. The younger shook her head
several times, but the other only laughed, and finally called to me,
"Jump up behind; we too are going to Vienna." Who more ready than I!
I made my best bow, and sprang up behind the carriage, the coachman
cracked his whip, and away we bowled along the smooth road so swiftly
that the wind whistled in my ears.
Behind me vanished my native village with its gardens and
church-tower, before me appeared fresh villages, castles, and
mountains, beneath me on either side the meadows in the tender green
of spring flew past, and above me countless larks were soaring in the
blue air. I was ashamed to shout aloud, but I exulted inwardly,
and shuffled about so on the foot-board behind the carriage that I
well-nigh lost my fiddle from under my arm. But when the sun rose
higher in the sky, while heavy, white, noonday clouds gathered on the
horizon, and the air hung sultry and still above the gently-waving
grain, I could not but remember my village and my father, and our
mill, and how cool and comfortable it was beside the shady mill-pool,
and how far, far away from me it all was. And the most curious
sensation overcame me; I felt as if I must turn and run back; but I
stuck my fiddle between my coat and my vest, settled myself on the
foot-board, and went to sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, the carriage was standing beneath tall
linden-trees, on the other side of which a broad flight of steps led
between columns into a magnificent castle. Through the trees beyond
I saw the towers of Vienna. The ladies, it appeared, had left the
carriage, and the horses had been unharnessed. I was startled to find
myself alone, and I hurried into the castle. As I did so I heard some
one at a window above laughing.
An odd time I had in this castle. First, as soon as I found myself in
the cool, spacious vestibule, some one tapped me on the shoulder with
a stick. I turned quickly about, and there stood a tall gentleman in
state apparel, with a broad bandolier of silk and gold crossing his
breast from his shoulder to his hip, a staff in his hand, gilded at
the top, and an extraordinarily large Roman nose; he strutted up to
me, swelling like a ruled-up turkey-cock, and asked me what I wanted
there. I was taken entirely aback, and in my confusion was unable
to utter a word. Several servants passed, going up and down the
staircase; they said nothing, but eyed me superciliously. Then
a lady's-maid appeared; she came up to me, declared that I was a
charming young fellow, and that her mistress had sent to ask me if
I did not want a place as gardener's boy. I put my hand in my
pocket--the few coins I had possessed were gone. They must have been
jerked out by my shuffling on the foot-board behind the carriage. I
had nothing to depend upon save my skill with the fiddle, for which
the gentleman with the staff, as he informed me in passing, would not
give a farthing. Therefore, in my distress, I said "yes" to the maid,
keeping my eyes fixed the while upon the portentous figure pacing
the hall to and fro like the pendulum of a clock in a church-tower,
appearing from the background with imposing majesty and with unfailing
regularity. At last a gardener came, muttering something about boors
and vagabonds, and led me off to the garden, preaching me a long
sermon on the way about my being diligent and industrious and never
loitering about the world any more, and how, if I would give up all my
idle and foolish ways, I might come to some good in the end. There was
a great deal of exhortation in this strain, very good and useful, but
I have since forgotten it nearly all. In fact, I really hardly know
how it all came about; I went on saying "yes" to everything, and I
felt like a bird with its wings clipped. But, thank God, in the end I
was earning my living!
I found life delightful in that garden. I had a hot dinner every day
and plenty of it, and more money than I needed for my glass of wine,
only, unfortunately, I had quite a deal to do. The pavilions, and
arbors, and long green walks delighted me, if I could only have
sauntered about and talked pleasantly like the gentlemen and ladies
who came there every day. Whenever the gardener was away and I was
alone, I took out my short tobacco-pipe, sat down, and thought of all
the beautiful, polite things with which I could have entertained
that lovely young lady who had brought me to the castle, had I been a
cavalier walking beside her. Or on sultry afternoons I lay on my
back on the grass, when all was so quiet that you could hear the bees
humming, and I gazed up at the clouds sailing away toward my native
village, and around me at the waving grass and flowers, and thought of
the lovely lady; and it sometimes chanced that I really saw her in the
distance walking in the garden, with her guitar or a book, tall and
beautiful as an angel, and I was only half conscious whether I were
awake or dreaming.
Thus, once as I was passing a summer-house on my way to work, I was
singing to myself--
"I gaze around me, going
By forest, dale, and lea,
O'er heights where streams are flowing,
My every thought bestowing,
Ah, Lady fair, on thee!"--
when, through the half-opened lattice of the cool, dark summer-house
buried amid flowers, I saw the sparkle of a pair of beautiful,
youthful eyes. I was so startled that I could not finish my song, but
passed on to my work without looking round.
In the evening--it was Saturday, and, in joyous anticipation of the
coming Sunday, I was standing, fiddle in hand, at the window of
the gardener's house, still thinking of the sparkling eyes--the
lady's-maid came tripping through the twilight--"The gracious Lady
fair sends you this to drink her health, and a 'Good-Night' besides!"
And in a twinkling she put a flask of wine on the window-sill and
vanished among the flowers and shrubs like a lizard.
I stood looking at the wonderful flask for a long time, not knowing
what to think. And if before I played the fiddle merrily, I now
played it ten times more so, and I sang the song of the Lady fair all
through, and all the other songs that I knew, until the nightingales
wakened outside and the moon and stars lit up the garden. Ah, that was
a lovely night!
No cradle-song tells the child's future; a blind hen finds many a
grain of wheat; he laughs best who laughs last; the unexpected often
happens; man proposes, God disposes: thus did I meditate the next day,
sitting in the garden with my pipe, and as I looked down at myself I
seemed to myself to be a downright dunce. Contrary to all my habits
hitherto, I now rose betimes every day, before the gardener and the
other assistants were stirring. It was most beautiful then in the
garden. The flowers, the fountains, the rose-bushes, the whole place,
glittered in the morning sunshine like pure gold and jewels. And in
the avenues of huge beeches it was as quiet, cool, and solemn as
a church, only the little birds fluttered around and pecked in the
gravel paths. In front of the castle, just under the windows, there
was a large bush in full bloom. Thither I used to go in the early
morning, and crouch down beneath the branches where I could watch the
windows, for I had not the courage to appear in the open. Thence I
sometimes saw the Lady fair in a snow-white robe come, still drowsy
and warm, to the open window. She would stand there braiding her
dark-brown hair, gazing abroad over the garden and shrubbery, or she
would tend and water the flowers upon her window-sill, or would rest
her guitar upon her white arm and sing out into the clear air so
wondrously that to this day my heart faints with sadness when one of
her songs recurs to me. And ah, it was all so long ago!
So my life passed for a week and more. But once--she was standing at
the window and all was quiet around--a confounded fly flew directly
up my nose, and I was seized with an interminable fit of sneezing.
She leaned far out of the window and discovered me cowering in the
shrubbery. I was overcome with mortification and did not go there
again for many a day.
At last I ventured to return to my post, but the window remained
closed. I hid in the bushes for four, five, six mornings, but she did
not appear. Then I grew tired of my hiding-place and came out boldly,
and every morning promenaded bravely beneath all the windows of the
castle. But the lovely Lady fair was not to be seen. At a window a
little farther on I saw the other lady standing; I had never before
seen her so distinctly. She had a fine rosy face, and was plump, and
as gorgeously attired as a tulip. I always made her a low bow, and she
acknowledged it, and her eyes twinkled very kindly and courteously.
Once only, I thought I saw the Lady fair standing behind the curtain
at her window, peeping out.
Many days passed and I did not see her, either in the garden or at
the window. The gardener scolded me for laziness; I was out of humor,
tired of myself and of all about me.
I was lying on the grass one Sunday afternoon, watching the blue
wreaths of smoke from my pipe, and fretting because I had not chosen
some other trade which would not have bored me so day after day.
The other fellows had all gone off to the dance in the neighboring
village. Every one was strolling about in Sunday attire, the houses
were gay, and there was melody in the very air. But I walked off and
sat solitary, like a bittern among the reeds, by a lonely pond in the
garden, rocking myself in a little skiff tied there, while the vesper
bells sounded faintly from the town and the swans glided to and fro on
the placid water. A sadness as of death possessed me.
On a sudden I heard, in the distance, voices talking gaily, and bursts
of merry laughter. They sounded nearer and nearer, and red and white
kerchiefs and hats and feathers were visible through the shrubbery. A
party of gentlemen and ladies were coming from the castle, across the
meadow, directly toward me, and my two ladies among them. I stood up
and was about to retire, when the elder perceived me. "Aha, you are
just what we want!" she called to me, smiling. "Row us across the
pond to the other side." The ladies cautiously took their seats in
the boat, assisted by the gentlemen, who made quite a parade of their
familiarity with the water. When all the ladies were seated, I pushed
off from the shore. One of the young gentlemen who stood in the prow
began, unperceived, to rock the boat. The ladies looked frightened,
and one or two screamed. The Lady fair, who had a lily in her hand,
and was sitting well in the centre of the skiff, looked down with a
quiet smile into the clear water, touching the surface of the pond now
and then with a lily, her image, amid the reflections of the clouds
and trees, appearing like an angel soaring gently through the deep
blue skies.
As I was gazing at her, the other of my two ladies, the plump, merry
one, suddenly took it into her head that I must sing as we glided
along. A very elegant young gentleman with an eye-glass, who sat
beside her, instantly turned to her, and, as he kissed her hand, said,
"Thanks for the poetic idea! A folk-song sung by one of the people in
the open air is an Alpine rose, upon the very Alps--the Alpine horns
are nothing but herbaria--the soul of the national consciousness."
But I said I did not know anything fine enough to sing to such great
people. Then the pert lady's-maid, who was beside me with a basket of
cups and bottles, and whom I had not perceived before, said, "He knows
a very pretty little song about a lady fair." "Yes, yes, sing that
one!" the lady exclaimed. I felt hot all over, and the Lady fair
lifted her eyes from the water and gave me a look that went to my very
soul. So I did not hesitate any longer, but took heart and sang with
all my might might--
"I gaze around me, going
By forest, dale, and lea,
O'er heights where streams are flowing,
My every thought bestowing,
Ah, Lady fair, on thee!
"And in my garden, finding
Bright flowers fresh and rare,
While many a wreath I'm binding,
Sweet thoughts therein I'm winding
Of thee, my Lady fair.
"For me 'twould be too daring
To lay them at her feet.
They'll soon away be wearing,
But love beyond comparing
Is thine, my Lady sweet.
"In early morning waking,
I toil with ready smile,
And though my heart be breaking,
I'll sing to hide its aching,
And dig my grave the while."
The boat touched the shore, and all the party got out; many of the
young gentlemen, as I had perceived, had made game of me in whispers
to the ladies while I was singing. The gentleman with the eye-glass
took my hand as he left the boat, and said something to me, I do not
remember what, and the elder of my two ladies gave me a kindly glance.
The Lady fair had never raised her eyes all the time I was singing,
and she went away without a word. As for me, before my song was ended
the tears stood in my eyes; my heart seemed like to burst with shame
and misery. I understood now for the first time how beautiful she
was, and how poor and despised and forsaken I, and when they had all
disappeared behind the bushes I could contain myself no longer, but
threw myself down on the grass and wept bitterly.
CHAPTER II
The highroad was close on one side of the castle garden, and separated
from it only by a high wall. A very pretty little toll-house with a
red-tiled roof stood near, with a gay little flower-garden inclosed by
a picket-fence behind it. A breach in the wall connected this garden
with the most secluded and shady part of the castle garden itself. The
toll-gate keeper who occupied the cottage died suddenly, and early one
morning, when I was still sound asleep, the Secretary from the castle
waked me in a great hurry and bade me come immediately to the
Bailiff. I dressed myself as quickly as I could and followed the brisk
Secretary, who, as we went, plucked a flower here and there and stuck
it into his button-hole, made scientific lunges in the air with his
cane, and talked steadily to me all the while, although my eyes and
ears were so filled with sleep that I could not understand anything
he said. When we reached the office, where as yet it was hardly light,
the Bailiff, behind a huge inkstand and piles of books and papers,
looked at me from out of his huge wig like an owl from out its nest,
and began: "What's your name? Where do you come from? Can you read,
write, and cipher?" And when I assented, he went on, "Well, her
Grace, in consideration of your good manners and extraordinary merit,
appoints you to the vacant post of Receiver of Toll." I hurriedly
passed in mental review the conduct and manners that had hitherto
distinguished me, and was forced to admit that the Bailiff was right.
And so, before I knew it, I was Receiver of Toll. I took possession of
my dwelling, and was soon comfortably established there. The deceased
toll-gate keeper had left behind him for his successor various
articles, which I appropriated, among others a magnificent scarlet
dressing-gown dotted with yellow, a pair of green slippers, a tasseled
nightcap, and several long-stemmed pipes. I had often wished for
these things at home, where I used to see our village pastor thus
comfortably provided. All day long, therefore--I had nothing else to
do--I sat on the bench before my house in dressing-gown and nightcap,
smoking the longest pipe from the late toll-gate keeper's collection,
and looking at the people walking, driving, and riding on the
high-road. I only wished that some of the folks from our village, who
had always said that I never would be worth anything, might happen to
pass by and see me thus. The dressing-gown became my complexion, and
suited me extremely well. So I sat there and pondered many things--the
difficulty of all beginnings, the great advantages of an easier mode
of existence, for example--and privately resolved to give up travel
for the future, save money like other people, and in time do something
really great in the world. Meanwhile, with all my resolves, anxieties,
and occupations, I in no wise forgot the Lady fair.
I dug up and threw out of my little garden all the potatoes and
other vegetables that I found there, and planted it instead with the
choicest flowers, which proceeding caused the Porter from the castle
with the big Roman nose--who since I had been made Receiver often came
to see me, and had become my intimate friend--to eye me askance as a
person crazed by sudden good fortune. But that did not deter me. For
from my little garden I could often hear feminine voices not far off
in the castle garden, and among them I thought I could distinguish
the voice of my Lady fair, although, because of the thick shrubbery,
I could see nobody. And so every day I plucked a nosegay of my finest
flowers, and when it was dark in the evening, I climbed over the wall
and laid it upon a marble table in an arbor near by, and every time
that I brought a fresh nosegay the old one was gone from the table.
One evening all the castle inmates were away hunting; the sun was just
setting, flooding the landscape with flame and color, the Danube wound
toward the horizon like a band of gold and fire, and the vine-dressers
on all the hills throughout the country were glad and gay. I was
sitting with the Porter on the bench before my cottage, enjoying the
mild air and the gradual fading to twilight of the brilliant day.
Suddenly the horns of the returning hunting-party sounded on the
air; the notes were tossed from hill to hill by the echoes. My soul
delighted in it all, and I sprang up and exclaimed, in an intoxication
of joy, "That is what I ought to follow in life, the huntsman's noble
calling!" But the Porter quietly knocked the ashes out of his pipe and
said, "You only think so; I've tried it. You hardly earn the shoes you
wear out, and you're never without a cough or a cold from perpetually
getting your feet wet." I cannot tell how it was, but upon hearing him
speak thus, I was seized with such a fit of foolish rage that I fairly
trembled. On a sudden the entire fellow, with his bedizened coat, his
big feet, his snuff, his big nose, and everything about him, became
odious to me. Quite beside myself, I seized him by the breast of his
coat and said, "Home with you, Porter, on the instant, or I'll send
you there in a way you won't like!" At these words the Porter was
more than ever convinced that I was crazy. He gazed at me with evident
fear, extricated himself from my grasp, and went without a word,
looking reproachfully back at me, and striding toward the castle,
where he reported me as stark, staring mad.
But after all I burst into a hearty laugh, glad in fact to be rid of
the pompous fellow, for it was just the hour when I was wont to carry
my nosegay to the arbor. I clambered over the wall, and was just about
to place the flowers on the marble table, when I heard the sound of a
horse's hoofs at some distance. There was no time for escape; my Lady
fair was riding slowly along the avenue in a green hunting-habit,
apparently lost in thought. All that I had read in an old book of my
father's about the beautiful Magelona came into my head--how she used
to appear among the tall forest-trees, when horns were echoing and
evening shadows were flitting through the glades. I could not
stir from the spot. She started when she perceived me and paused
involuntarily. I was as if intoxicated with intense joy, dread, and
the throbbing of my heart, and when I saw that she actually wore at
her breast the flowers I had left yesterday, I could no longer keep
silent, but said in a rapture, "Fairest Lady fair, accept these
flowers too, and all the flowers in my garden, and everything I have!
Ah, if I could only brave some danger for you!" At first she had
looked at me so gravely, almost angrily, that I shivered, but then
she cast down her eyes, and did not lift them while I was speaking. At
that moment voices and the tramp of horses were heard in the distance.
She snatched the flowers from my hand, and without saying a word,
swiftly vanished at the end of the avenue.
After this evening I had neither rest nor peace. I felt continually,
as I had always felt when spring was at hand, restless and merry, and
as if some great good fortune or something extraordinary were about
to befall me. My wretched accounts in especial never would come right,
and when the sunshine, playing among the chestnut boughs before my
window, cast golden-green gleams upon my figures, illuminating "Bro't
over" and "Total," my addition grew sometimes so confused that I
actually could not count three. The figure "eight" always looked to
me like my stout, tightly-laced lady with the gay head-dress, and
the provoking "seven" like a finger-post pointing the wrong way, or a
gallows. The "nine" was the queerest, suddenly, before I knew what it
was about, standing on its head to look like "six," whilst "two" would
turn into a pert interrogation-point, as if to ask me, "What in the
world is to become of you, you poor zero? Without the others, the
slender 'one' and all the rest, you never can come to anything!"
I had no longer any ease in sitting before my door. I took out a stool
to make myself more comfortable, and put my feet upon it; I patched up
an old parasol, and held it over me like a Chinese pleasure-dome. But
all would not do. As I sat smoking and speculating, my legs seemed
to stretch to twice their size from weariness, and my nose lengthened
visibly as I looked down at it for hours. And when sometimes, before
daybreak, an express drove up, and I went out, half asleep, into the
cool air, and a pretty face, but dimly seen in the dawning except for
its sparkling eyes, looked out at me from the coach window and kindly
bade me good-morning, while from the villages around the cock's clear
crow echoed across the fields of gently-waving grain, and an early
lark, high in the skies among the flushes of morning, soared here and
there, and the Postilion wound his horn and blew, and blew--as the
coach drove off, I would stand looking after it, feeling as if I could
not but start off with it on the instant into the wide, wide world.
I still took my flowers every day, when the sun had set, to the marble
table in the dim arbor. But since that evening all had been over. Not
a soul took any notice of them, and when I went to look after them
early the next morning, there they lay as I had left them, gazing
sadly at me with their heads hanging, and the dew-drops glistening
upon their fading petals as if they were weeping. This distressed me,
and I plucked no more flowers. I let the weeds grow in my garden as
they pleased, and the flowers stayed on their stalks until the wind
blew them away. Within me there were the same desolation and neglect.
In this critical state of affairs it happened once that, as I was
leaning out of my window gazing dully into vacancy, the lady's-maid
from the castle came tripping across the road. When she saw me she
came and stood just outside the window. "His Grace returned from
his travels yesterday," she remarked, hurriedly. "Indeed!" I said,
surprised, for I had taken no interest in anything for several weeks,
and did not even know that his Grace had been traveling. "Then his
lovely daughter will be very glad." The maid looked at me with a
strange expression of face, so that I began to wonder whether I had
said anything especially stupid. "He knows absolutely nothing!" she
said at last, turning up her little nose. "Well," she resumed, "there
is to be a ball and masquerade this evening at the castle in honor of
his Grace. My lady is to be dressed as a flower-girl--understand, as
a flower-girl. And she has noticed that you have particularly pretty
flowers in your garden." "That's strange," I thought to myself; "there
is hardly a flower to be seen there for the weeds!" But she continued:
"And since my lady needs perfectly fresh flowers for her costume, you
are to bring her some this evening, and wait under the big pear-tree
in the castle garden when it is dark until she comes for the flowers
herself."
I was completely dazed with joy at this intelligence, and in my
rapture I leaped out of the window and ran after the maid.
"Ugh, what an ugly dressing-gown!" she exclaimed, when she saw me
with my fluttering robe in the open air. This vexed me, but, not to be
behindhand in gallantry, I capered gaily after her to give her a kiss.
Unluckily, my feet became entangled in my dressing-gown, which was
much too long for me, and I fell flat on the ground. When I had picked
myself up the maid was gone, and I heard her in the distance laughing
fit to kill herself.
Now I had delightful food for my reflections. After all, she still
remembered me and my flowers! I went into my garden and hastily tore
up all the weeds from the beds, throwing them high above my head into
the sunlit air, as if with the roots I were eradicating all melancholy
and annoyance from my life. Once more the roses were like _her_ lips,
the sky-blue convolvulus was like _her_ eyes, the snowy lily with its
pensive, drooping head was _her_ very image. I put them all tenderly
in a little basket; the evening was calm and lovely, not a speck of
a cloud in the sky. Here and there a star appeared; the murmur of
the Danube was heard afar over the meadows; in the tall trees of the
castle garden countless birds were twittering to one another merrily.
Ah, I was so happy!
When at last night came I took my basket on my arm and set out for the
large garden. The flowers in the little basket looked so gay, white,
red, blue, and smelled so sweet, that my very heart laughed when I
peeped in at them.
Filled with joyous thoughts, I walked in the lovely moonlight over the
trim paths strewn with gravel, across the little white bridge, beneath
which the swans were sleeping on the bosom of the water, and past the
pretty arbors and summer-houses. I soon found the big pear-tree; it
was the same under which, while I was gardener's boy, I used to lie on
sultry afternoons.
All around me here was dark and lonely. A tall aspen quivered and kept
whispering with its silver leaves. The music from the castle was
heard at intervals, and now and then there were voices in the garden;
sometimes they passed quite near me, and then all would be still
again.
My heart beat fast. I had a strange uncomfortable sensation as if I
were a robber. I stood for a long time stock-still, leaning against
the tree and listening; but when no one appeared I could bear it no
longer. I hung my basket on my arm and clambered up into the pear-tree
to breathe a purer air.
The music of the dance floated up to me over the tree-tops. I
overlooked the entire garden and gazed directly into the brilliantly
illuminated windows of the castle. Chandeliers glittered there like
galaxies of stars; a multitude of gaily-dressed gentlemen and ladies
wandered and waltzed and whirled about unrecognizable, like the gay
figures of a magic-lantern; at times some of them leaned out of the
windows and looked down into the garden. In front of the castle the
brilliant light gilded the grass, the shrubbery, and the trees, so
that the flowers and the birds seemed to be aroused by it. All around
and below me, however, the garden lay black and still.
"_She_ is dancing there now," I thought to myself up in the tree,"
and has long since forgotten you and your flowers. All are gay; not a
human being cares for you in the least. And thus it is with me, always
and everywhere. Every one has his little nook marked out for him on
this earth, his warm hearth, his cup of coffee, his wife, his glass of
wine in the evening, and is perfectly happy; even the Porter with his
big nose is content. For me there is no place, I seem to be just too
late everywhere; the world has not a bit of need of me."
As I was philosophizing thus, I suddenly heard something rustle on the
grass below me. Two soft voices were speaking together in a low
tone. In a moment the foliage of the shrubbery was parted, and the
lady's-maid's little face appeared among the leaves, peering about
on all sides. The moonlight sparkled in her saucy eyes as they
peeped out. I held my breath and stared down at her. Before long the
flower-girl did actually appear among the trees, just as the maid had
described her to me yesterday. My heart throbbed as if it would burst.
She had on a mask, and seemed to be gazing around in surprise. Somehow
she did not look to me as slender and graceful as she had been.
At last she reached the tree, and took off her mask. It was the
other--the elder lady!
How glad I was, when I had recovered from the first shock, that I was
up here in safety! How in the world did she chance to come here? If
the dear, lovely Lady fair should happen to come at this instant
for her flowers, there would be a fine to-do! I could have cried for
vexation at the whole affair.
Meanwhile the disguised flower-girl beneath me began: "It is so
stifling hot in the ball-room, I had to come out to cool myself in
this lovely open air." Thereupon she fanned herself with her mask
and puffed and blew. In the bright moonlight I could plainly see how
swollen were the cords of her neck; she looked very angry and quite
scarlet in the face. The lady's maid was all the while searching
behind every bush, as if she were looking for a lost pin.
"I do so need more fresh flowers for my character," the flower-girl
continued. "Where can he be?" The maid went on searching, and kept
chuckling to herself. "What did you say, Rosetta?" the flower-girl
asked, shrewishly. "I say what I always have said," the maid replied,
putting on a very serious, honest face; "the Receiver is a lazy
fellow; of course he is lying behind some bush sound asleep."
My blood tingled with longing to jump down and defend my reputation,
when on a sudden a burst of music and loud shouts were heard from the
castle.
The flower-girl could stay no longer. "The people are cheering his
Grace," she said passionately. "Come, we shall be missed!" And she
clapped on her mask in a hurry, and ran in a rage with the maid toward
the castle. The trees and bushes seemed to point after her with long,
derisive fingers, the moonlight danced nimbly up and down over her
stout figure as though over the key-board of a piano, and thus to
the sound of trumpets and kettle-drums she made her exit, like many a
singer whom I have seen upon the stage.
I, seated above in my tree, was downright bewildered, and gazed
fixedly at the castle; a circle of tall torches upon the steps of the
entrance cast a strange glare upon the glittering windows and deep
into the garden; the assembled servants were to serenade their master.
In the midst of them stood the gorgeous Porter, like a minister of
state, before a music-stand, working away busily at a bassoon.
Just as I had settled myself to listen to the beautiful serenade, the
folding-doors leading to the balcony above the entrance parted. A tall
gentleman, very handsome and dignified, in uniform and glittering with
orders, stepped out on the balcony, leading by the hand the lovely
young Lady fair, dressed in white like a lily in the night, or like
the moon in the clear skies.
I could not take my eyes from her, and garden, trees, and fields
disappeared before me, as she stood there tall and slender, so
wondrously illuminated by the torch-light, now speaking with such
grace to the young officer, and now nodding down kindly to the
musicians. The people below were beside themselves with delight,
and at last I too could restrain myself no longer, and joined in the
cheers with all my might.
But when, soon after, she disappeared from the balcony, one after
another the torches below were extinguished and the music-stands
cleared away, and the garden around was once more dark, and the trees
rustled as before--then it all became clear to me; I saw that it was
really only the aunt who had ordered the flowers of me, that the Lady
fair never thought of me and had been married long ago, and that I
myself was a big fool.
All this plunged me into an abyss of reflection. I rolled myself round
like a hedgehog on the prickles of my own thoughts. Snatches of music
still reached me now and then from the ball-room--the clouds floated
lonely away above the dim garden. And there I sat, all through
the night, up in the tree, like a night-owl, amid the ruins of my
happiness.
The cool breeze of morning aroused me at last from my dreamings. I was
startled as I looked about me. The music and dancing had long since
ceased, and everything around the castle and on the lawn, and the
marble steps and columns, all looked quiet, cool, and solemn; the
fountain alone plashed on before the entrance. Here and there in the
boughs near me the birds were awaking, shaking their bright feathers,
and as they stretched their little wings, peering curiously and amazed
at their strange fellow-sleeper. The joyous rays of morning flashed
across my breast and over the garden.
I stood erect in my tree, and for the first time for a long while
looked far abroad over the country, to where the ships glided down
the Danube among the vineyards, and the high-roads, still deserted,
stretched like bridges across the gleaming landscape and far over the
distant hills and valleys.
I cannot tell how it was, but all at once my former love of travel
took possession of me, all the old melancholy, and delight, and ardent
expectation. And at the same moment I thought of the Lady fair over in
the castle sleeping among flowers, beneath silken coverlets, with an
angel surely keeping watch beside her bed in the silence of the dawn.
"No!" I cried aloud. "I must go away from here, far, far away--as far
as the sky stretches its blue arch!"
As I uttered the words I tossed my basket high into the air, so that
it was beautiful to see how the flowers fell among the branches and
lay in gay colors on the green sod below. Then I got down as quickly
as possible, and went through the quiet garden to my dwelling. I
paused many times at spots where I had seen her pass, or where I had
lain in the shade and thought of her.
In and about my cottage all was just as I had left it the day before.
The garden was torn up and laid waste, the big account-book lay
open on the table in my room, my fiddle, which I had almost clean
forgotten, hung dusty on the wall; a ray of morning light glittered
upon the strings. It struck a chord in my heart. "Yes," I said, "come
here, thou faithful instrument! Our kingdom is not of this world!"
So I took the fiddle from the wall, and leaving behind me the
account-book, dressing-gown, slippers, pipes, and parasol, I walked
out of my cottage, as poor as when I entered it, and down along the
gleaming high-road.
I looked back often and often; I felt very strange, sad, and yet
merry, like a bird escaping from his cage. And when I had walked some
distance I took out my fiddle and sang--
"I wander on, in God confiding,
For all are His, wood, field, and fell;
O'er earth and skies He still presiding,
For me will order all things well."
The castle, the garden, and the spires of Vienna vanished behind me
in the morning mists; far above me countless larks exulted in the air;
thus, past gay villages and hamlets and over green hills, I wandered
on toward Italy.
CHAPTER III
Here was a puzzle! It had never occurred to me that I did not know my
way. Not a human being was to be seen in the quiet early morning
whom I could question, and right before me the road divided into many
roads, which went on far, far over the highest mountains, as though to
the very end of the world--so that I actually grew giddy as I looked
along them.
At last a peasant appeared, going to church I fancy, as it was Sunday,
in an old-fashioned coat with large silver buttons, and swinging a
long malacca cane with a massive silver head, which sparkled from afar
in the sunlight. I immediately asked him very politely, "Can you tell
me which is the road to Italy?" The fellow stood still, stared at me,
thrust out his under lip reflectively, and stared at me again. I began
once more: "To Italy, where oranges grow." "What do I care for your
oranges!" said the peasant, and walked on sturdily. I should have
credited the fellow with more politeness, for he really looked very
fine.
What was to be done? Turn round and go back to my native village? Why,
the folks would have jeered me, and the boys would have run after me
crying, "Oh, indeed! you're welcome back from 'out in the world.'
How does it look 'out in the world?' Haven't you brought us some
ginger-nuts from 'out in the world?'" The Porter with the High Roman
nose, who certainly was familiar with Universal History, used often to
say to me, "Respected Herr Receiver, Italy is a beautiful country; the
dear God takes care of every one there. You can lie on your back in
the sunshine and raisins drop into your mouth; and if a tarantula
bites you, you dance with the greatest ease, although you never
in your life before learned to dance." "Ay, to Italy! to Italy!" I
shouted with delight, and, heedless of any choice of roads, hurried on
along the first that came.
After I had gone a little way I saw on the right a most beautiful
orchard, with the morning sun shimmering on the trunks and through the
tree-tops so brilliantly that it looked as if the ground were spread
with golden rugs. As no one was in sight, I clambered over the low
fence and lay down comfortably on the grass under an apple-tree;
all my limbs were still aching from camping out in the tree on the
previous night. From where I lay I could see far abroad over the
country, and as it was Sunday the sound of the church-bells from
the far distance came to me over the quiet fields, and gaily-dressed
peasants were walking across the meadows and along the lanes to
church. I was glad at heart; the birds sang in the tree overhead;
I thought of my father's mill, and of the garden of the lovely Lady
fair, and of how far, far away it all was--until I fell sound asleep.
I dreamed that the Lady fair came walking, or rather slowly flying,
toward me from the lovely landscape to the music of the church-bells,
in long white robes that waved in the rosy morning. Then again
it seemed that we were not in a strange country, but in my native
village, in the deep shade beside the mill. But everything was still
and deserted, as it is when the people are all gone to church and only
the solemn sounds of the organ wafted down through the trees break the
stillness; I was oppressed with melancholy. But the Lady fair was very
kind and gentle, and put her hand in mine and walked along with me,
and sang, amid this solitude, the beautiful song that she used to
sing to her guitar early in the morning at her open window, and in the
placid mill-pool I saw her image, lovelier even than herself, except
that the eyes were wondrous large and looked at me so strangely that
I was almost afraid. Then suddenly the mill-wheel began to turn, at
first slowly, then faster and more noisily; the pool became dark and
troubled, the Lady fair turned very pale, and her robes grew longer
and longer, and fluttered wildly in long strips like pennons of
mist up toward the skies; the roaring of the mill-wheel sounded ever
louder, and it seemed as though it were the Porter blowing upon his
bassoon, so that I waked up with my heart throbbing violently.
In fact, a breeze had arisen, which was gently stirring the leaves of
the apple-tree above me; but the noise and roaring came neither from
the mill nor from the Porter's bassoon, but from the same peasant who
had before refused to show me the way to Italy. He had taken off
his Sunday coat and put on a white smock-frock. "Oho!" he said, as I
rubbed my sleepy eyes, "do you want to pick your oranges here, that
you trample down all my grass instead of going to church, you lazy
lout, you?" I was vexed that the boor should have waked me, and I
started up and cried, "Hold your tongue! I have been a better gardener
than you will ever be, and a Receiver, and if you had been driving to
town, you would have had to take off your dirty cap to me, sitting at
my door in my yellow-dotted, red dressing-gown--" But the fellow was
nothing daunted, and, putting his arms akimbo, merely asked, "What do
you want here? eh! eh!" I saw that he was a short, stubbed, bow-legged
fellow, with protruding goggle-eyes, and a red, rather crooked nose.
And when he went on saying nothing but "Eh! eh!" and kept advancing
toward me step by step, I was suddenly seized with so curious a
sensation of disgust that I hastily jumped to my feet, leaped over the
fence, and, without looking round, ran across country until my fiddle
in my pocket twanged again.
When at last I stopped to take breath, the orchard and the whole
valley were out of sight and I was in a beautiful forest. But I took
little note of it, for I was downright provoked at the peasant's
impertinence, and I fumed for a long time, to myself. I walked on
quickly, going farther and farther from the high-road and in among the
mountains. The plank-roadway which I had been following ceased, and
before me was only a narrow, unfrequented foot-path. Not a soul was
to be seen anywhere, and no sound was to be heard. But it was very
pleasant walking; the trees rustled and the birds sang sweetly. I
resigned myself to the guidance of heaven, and, taking out my violin,
played all my favorite airs. Very joyous they sounded in the lonely
forest.
I grew tired of playing after a while, for I stumbled every minute
over the tiresome roots of the trees, and I began to grow very hungry,
while the wood seemed endless. Thus I wandered for the entire day,
until the sun's rays came aslant through the trunks of the trees, when
at last I emerged on a little grassy vale shut in by the mountains and
gay with red and yellow flowers, above which myriads of butterflies
were fluttering in the golden light of the setting sun. It was as
secluded here as though the world had been hundreds of miles away. The
crickets chirped, and a shepherd lad lying among the tall grasses blew
so melancholy an air upon his horn that it was enough to break one's
heart. "Yes," thought I to myself, "who has as happy a lot as a lazy
lout! Some of us, though, have to wander about among strangers, and be
always on the go." As a lovely, clear stream separated me from him,
I called to him to ask where the nearest village was. But he did not
disturb himself to reply--only stretched his head a little out of the
grass, pointed with his horn to the opposite wood, and coolly resumed
his piping.
I marched on briskly, for twilight was at hand. The birds, which had
made a great clatter while the sun was disappearing on the horizon,
suddenly fell silent, and I began to feel almost afraid, so solemn
was the perpetual rustling of the lonely forest. At last I heard dogs
barking in the distance. I walked more quickly, the forest grew less
and less dense, and in a little while I saw through the last trees a
beautiful village-green, where a crowd of children were frolicking,
and capering around a huge linden in the centre. Opposite me was an
inn, and at a table before it were seated some peasants playing cards
and smoking. On one side a number of lads and lasses were gathered
in a group, the girls with their arms rolled in their aprons, and all
gossiping together in the cool of the evening.
I took very little time for consideration, but, drawing my fiddle from
my pocket, I played a merry waltz as I came out from the forest. The
girls were surprised, and the old folks laughed so that the woods
reechoed with their merriment. But when I reached the linden, and,
leaning my back against it, went on playing gay waltzes, a whisper
went round among the groups of young people to the right and left; the
lads laid aside their pipes, each put his arm around his lass's waist,
and in the twinkling of an eye the young folk were all waltzing around
me; the dogs barked, skirts and coat-tails fluttered, and the children
stood around me in a circle gazing curiously into my face and at my
briskly-moving fingers.
When the first waltz was ended, it was easy to see how good music
loosens the limbs. The peasant lads, who had before been restlessly
shuffling about on the benches, with their pipes in their mouths and
their legs stretched out stiffly in front of them, were positively
transformed, and, with their gay handkerchiefs hanging from the
button-holes of their coats, capered about with the lasses so that it
was a pleasure to look at them. One of them, who evidently thought
a deal of himself, fumbled in his waistcoat-pocket for a long while,
that the others might see him, and finally brought out a little silver
coin, which he tried to put into my hand. It irritated me, although I
had not a stiver in my pocket. I told him to keep his pennies, I was
playing only for joy, because I was glad to be among people once more.
Soon afterward, however, a pretty girl came up to me with a great
tankard of wine. "Musicians are thirsty folk," she said, with a laugh
that displayed her pearls of teeth gleaming so temptingly between her
red lips that I should have liked to kiss her then and there. She put
the tankard to her charming mouth, and her eyes sparkled at me over
its rim; she then handed it to me; I drained it to the bottom, and
played afresh, till all were spinning merrily about me once more.
By and by the old peasants finished their game, and the young people
grew tired and separated, so that gradually all was quiet and deserted
in front of the inn. The girl who had brought me the wine also walked
toward the village, but she went very slowly, and looked around from
time to time as if she had forgotten something. At last she stopped
and seemed to search for it on the ground, but as she stooped I saw
her glance toward me from under her arm. I had learned polite manners
at the castle, so I sprang toward her and said, "Have you lost
anything, my pretty ma'amselle?" She blushed crimson. "Ah, no," she
said; "it was only a rose; will you have it?" I thanked her, and stuck
the rose in my button-hole. She looked very kindly at me, and said,
"You play beautifully." "Yes," I replied, "it is a gift from God."
"Musicians are very rare in the country about here," she began again,
then stammered, and cast down her eyes. "You might earn a deal of
money here. My father plays the fiddle a little, and likes to hear
about foreign countries--and my father is very rich." Then she
laughed, and said, "If you only would not waggle your head so, when
you play." "My dearest girl," I said, "do not blush so--and as for the
tremoloso motion of the head, we can't help it, great musicians all do
it." "Oh, indeed!" rejoined the girl. She was about to say more, when
a terrible racket arose in the inn; the front door was opened with a
bang, and a tall, lean fellow was shot out of it like a ramrod, after
which it was slammed to behind him.
At the first sound the girl ran off like a deer and vanished in the
darkness. The man picked himself up and began to rave against the
inn with such volubility that it was a wonder to hear him. "What!" he
yelled, "I drunk? I not pay the chalk-marks on your smoky door? Rub
them out! rub them out! Did I not shave you yesterday over a ladle,
and cut you just under the nose so that you bit the ladle in two?
Shaving takes off one mark; ladle, another mark; court-plaster on your
nose, another. How many more of your dirty marks do you want to have
paid? But all right--all right. I'll let the whole village, the whole
world go unshaved. Wear your beards, for all I care, till they are so
long that at the judgment-day the Almighty will not know whether you
are Jews or Christians. Yes, hang yourselves with your beards, shaggy
bears that you are!" Here he burst into tears and, in a maudlin,
falsetto voice, sobbed out, "Am I to drink water like a wretched fish?
Is that loving your neighbor? Am I not a man and a skilled surgeon?
Ah, I am beside myself today; my heart is full of pity, and of love
for my fellow-creatures." And then, finding that all was quiet in the
house, he began to walk away. When he saw me, he came plunging toward
me with outstretched arms. I thought the fellow was about to embrace
me, and sprang aside, letting him stumble on in the darkness, where I
heard him discoursing to himself for some time.
All sorts of fancies filled my brain. The girl who had given me the
rose was young, pretty, and rich. I could make my fortune before one
could turn round. And sheep and pigs, turkeys, and fat geese stuffed
with apples--verily, I seemed to see the Porter strutting up to me:
"Seize your luck, Receiver, seize your luck! 'Marry young, you're
never wrong;' take home your bride, live in the country, and live
well." Plunged in these philosophical reflections, I sat me down on
a stone, for, since I had no money, I did not venture to knock at
the inn. The moon shone brilliantly, the forests on the mountain-side
murmured in the still night; now and then a dog barked in the village
which lay farther down the valley, buried, as it were, beneath foliage
and moonlight. I gazed up at the heavens, where a few clouds were
sailing slowly and now and then a falling star shot down from the
zenith. Thus this same moon, thought I, is shining down upon my
father's mill and upon his Grace's castle. Everything there is quiet
by this time, the Lady fair is asleep, and the fountains and leaves in
the garden are whispering just as they used to whisper, all the same
whether I am there, or here, or dead. And the world seemed to me so
terribly big, and I so utterly alone in it, that I could have wept
from the very depths of my heart.
While I was thus sitting there, suddenly I heard the sound of horses'
hoofs in the forest. I held my breath and listened as the sound
came nearer and nearer, until I could hear the horses snorting. Soon
afterward two horsemen appeared under the trees, but paused at the
edge of the woods, and talked together in low, very eager tones, as
I could see by the moving shadows which were thrown across the
bright village-green, and by their long dark arms pointing in various
directions. How often at home, when my mother, now dead, had told me
of savage forests and fierce robbers, had I privately longed to be a
part of such a story! I was well paid now for my silly, rash longings.
I reached up the linden-tree, beneath which I was sitting, as high
as I could, unobserved, until I clasped the lowest branch, and then I
swung myself up. But just as I had got my body half across the branch,
and was about to drag my legs up after it, one of the horsemen trotted
briskly across the green toward me. I shut my eyes tight amid the
thick foliage, and did not stir. "Who is there?" a voice called
directly under me. "Nobody!" I yelled in terror at being detected,
although I could not but laugh to myself at the thought of how the
rogues would look when they should turn my empty pockets inside out.
"Aha!" said the robber, "whose are these legs, then, hanging down
here?" There was no help for it. "They are," I replied, "only a couple
of legs of a poor, lost musician." And I hastily let myself drop, for
I was ashamed to hang there any longer like a broken fork.
The rider's horse shied when I dropped so suddenly from the tree. He
patted the animal's neck, and said, laughing, "Well, we too are lost,
so we are comrades; perhaps you can help us to find the road to B. You
shall be no loser by it." I assured him that I knew nothing about the
road to B., and said that I would ask in the inn, or would conduct
them to the village. But the man would not listen to reason; he
drew from his girdle a pistol, the barrel of which glittered in the
moonlight. "My dear fellow," he said in a very friendly tone, as he
wiped off the glittering barrel and then ran his eye along it--"my
dear fellow, you will have the kindness to go yourself before us to
B."
Verily, I was in a scrape. If I chanced to hit the right road, I
should certainly get into the midst of the robber band and be beaten
because I had no money; if I did not find the road, I should be beaten
of course. I wasted very little thought upon the matter, but took
the first road at hand, the one past the inn which led away from
the village. The horseman galloped back to his companion, and both
followed me slowly at some distance. Thus we wandered on foolishly
enough at hap-hazard through the moonlit night. The road led through
forests on the side of a mountain. Sometimes we could see, above the
tops of the pines stirring darkly beneath us, far abroad into the
deep, silent valleys; now and then a nightingale burst into song; the
dogs bayed in the distant villages. A brook babbled ceaselessly from
the depths below us, and here and there glistened in the moonlight.
The hush was disturbed by the monotonous tramp of the horses and by
the stir and movement of their riders, who talked together incessantly
in a foreign tongue, and the bright moonlight contrasted sharply with
the long shadows of the trees, which swept across the figures of the
horsemen, making them appear now black, now light, now dwarfish, and
anon gigantic. My thoughts grew strangely confused, as though in a
dream from which I could not waken, but I marched straight ahead. We
certainly must reach the end of the forest and of the night too, I
thought.
At last long, rosy streaks flushed the horizon here and there but
faintly, as when one breathes upon a mirror, and a lark began to sing
high up above the peaceful valley. My heart at once grew perfectly
light at the approach of dawn, and all fear left me. The two horsemen
stretched themselves, looked around, and seemed for the first time
to suspect that we might not have taken the right road. They chatted
much, and I could perceive that they were talking of me; it even
seemed to me that one of them began to mistrust me, as though I were
a rogue trying to lead them astray in the forest. This amused me
mightily, for the lighter it grew the greater grew my courage, until
we emerged upon a fine, spacious opening. Here I looked about me quite
savagely, and whistled once or twice through my fingers, as scoundrels
always do when they wish to signal one another.
"Halt!" exclaimed one of the horsemen, so suddenly that I jumped. When
I looked round I saw that both had alighted and had tied their horses
to a tree. One of them came up to me rapidly, stared me full in the
face, and then burst into a fit of immoderate laughter. I must confess
this senseless merriment irritated me. But he said, "Why, it is
actually the gardener--I should say the Receiver, from the castle!"
I stared at him in turn, but could not remember who he was; indeed, I
should have had enough to do to recognize all the young gentlemen who
came and went at the castle. He kept up an eternal laughter, however,
declaring, "This is magnificent! You're taking a holiday, I see;
we are just in want of a servant; stay with us and you will have a
perpetual holiday." I was dumbfounded, and said at last that I was
just on my way to visit Italy. "Italy?" the stranger rejoined. "That
is just where we wish to go!" "Ah, if that be so!" I exclaimed, and,
taking out my fiddle, I tuned up so that all the birds in the
wood awaked. The young fellow immediately threw his arm around his
companion, and they waltzed about the meadow like mad.
Suddenly they stood still. "By heavens," exclaimed one, "I can see the
church-tower of B.! We shall soon be there." He took out his watch and
made it repeat, then shook his head, and made the watch strike again.
"No," he said, "it will not do; we should arrive too early, and that
might be very bad."
Then they brought out from their saddle-bags cakes, cutlets, and
bottles of wine, spread a gay cloth on the grass, stretched themselves
beside it, and feasted to their hearts' content, sharing all
generously with me, which I greatly enjoyed, seeing that for some days
I had not had over and above enough to eat. "And let me tell you,"
one of them said to me--"but you do not know us yet?" I shook my head.
"Then let me tell you. I am the painter Lionardo, and my friend here
is a painter also, called Guido."
I could see the two painters more clearly in the dawning morning. Herr
Lionardo was tall, brown, and slender, with merry, ardent eyes. The
other was much younger, smaller, and more delicate, dressed in antique
German style, as the Porter called it, with a white collar and bare
throat, about which hung dark brown curls, which he was often obliged
to toss aside from his pretty face. When he had breakfasted, he picked
up my fiddle, which I had laid on the grass beside me, seated himself
upon the fallen trunk of a tree, and strummed the strings. Then he
sang in a voice clear as a wood-robin's, so that it went to my very
heart heart--
"When the earliest morning ray
Through the valley finds its way,
Hill and forest fair awaking,
All who can their flight are taking.
"And the lad who's free from care
Shouts, with cap flung high in air,
'Song its flight can aye be winging;
Let me, then, be ever singing.'"
As he sang, the ruddy rays of morning exquisitely illumined his pale
face and dark, love-lit eyes. But I was so tired that the words and
notes of his song mingled and blended strangely in my ears, until at
last I fell sound asleep.
When, by and by, I began gradually to awaken, I heard, as in a dream,
the two painters talking together beside me, and the birds singing
overhead, while the morning sun shining through my closed eyelids
produced the sensation of looking toward the light through red
curtains. "_Com' è bello_!" I heard some one exclaim close to me. I
opened my eyes, and saw the younger painter bending over me in the
clear morning light, so near that I seemed to see only his large black
eyes between his drooping curls.
I sprang up hastily, for it was broad day. Herr Lionardo seemed
cross--he had two angry furrows on his brow--and hastily made ready to
move on. But the other painter shook his curls away from his face and
quietly hummed an air to himself as he was bridling his steed, until
at last Lionardo burst into a sudden fit of laughter, picked up a
bottle standing on the grass, and poured the contents into a couple
of glasses. "To our happy arrival!" he exclaimed, as the two clinked
their glasses melodiously. Whereupon Lionardo tossed the empty bottle
high in the air, and it sparkled brilliantly.
At last they mounted their horses, and I marched on beside them. Just
at our feet lay a valley in measureless extent, into which our road
descended. How clear and fresh and bright and jubilant were all the
sights and sounds around! I was so cool, so happy, that I felt as if I
could have flown from the mountain out into the glorious landscape.
CHAPTER IV
Farewell, mill, and castle, and Porter! We went at such a pace that
the wind nearly blew my hat off. Right and left, villages, towns, and
vineyards flew past in a twinkling; behind me the two painters were
seated in the carriage, before me were four horses and a gorgeous
postilion, while I, seated high up on the box, bounced into the air
from time to time.
It had happened thus: Arrived at B., while we were as yet in the
outskirts a tall, thin, crusty gentleman in a green plush coat came to
meet us, and, with many obeisances to the two painters, conducted
us into the village, where, beneath the tall linden beside the
post-station, stood a fine carriage with four post-horses. Herr
Lionardo meanwhile insisted that I had outgrown my clothes, and in a
trice he produced another suit from his portmanteau, and I had to put
on a beautiful new dress-coat and vest; very fine to see, but they
were too long and too wide for me, and absolutely fluttered about me.
And I also had a brand-new hat, which shone in the sunlight as if it
had been smeared with fresh butter. Then the crusty stranger gentleman
took the bridles of the two horses which the painters had been riding,
the painters themselves got into the carriage, I mounted upon the
box, and we started, just as the postmaster poked his head out of the
window, in his nightcap. The postilion blew his horn merrily, and we
were off for Italy.
I led a magnificent existence up there, like a bird in the air, except
that I did not need to fly. I had absolutely nothing to do but to sit
on the box day and night, and bring out food and drink to the carriage
from the inns, for the painters never alighted, and in the daytime
they shut the carriage windows close, as if the sun would have killed
them; only now and then Herr Guido put his pretty head out of the
carriage window and chatted kindly with me, laughing the while at Herr
Lionardo, who always seemed to dislike these talks. Once or twice I
nearly fell into disgrace with my master--the first time because on a
clear starry night I began to play the fiddle up there on my box, and
then because of my sleeping. It _was_ strange! I longed to see all
that I could of Italy, and opened my eyes wide every fifteen minutes.
And yet, after I had gazed steadily about me for a while, the sixteen
trotting feet before me would grow indistinct and dreamy, my eyes
would gradually close, and at last I would fall into a slumber so
profound and invincible that it was impossible to rouse me. Then day
or night, rain or sunshine, Tyrol or Italy, it was all the same;
I swayed first to the right, then to the left, then backward--nay,
sometimes my head nodded down so low that my hat dropped off, and Herr
Guido screamed aloud.
Thus we had passed, I hardly know how, half through the part of
Italy that they call Lombardy, when on a fine evening we stopped at
a country inn. The post-horses were to be ready for us at the
neighboring station in a couple of hours, so the painters left the
carriage, and were shown into a special apartment, to rest a little,
and to write some letters. I was greatly pleased, and betook myself
to the common room to eat and drink in comfort. Here everything looked
rather disreputable: the maids were going about with their hair in
disorder and their neckerchiefs awry, exposing their sallow skin;
the men-servants were at their supper in blue smock-frocks, around a
circular table, whence they glowered at me from time to time. They all
wore their hair tied behind in a short, thick queue which looked quite
dandified. "Here you are," I said to myself, as I ate my supper, "here
you are in the country from which such queer people used to come to
the Herr Pastor's with mouse-traps, and barometers, and pictures. How
much a man learns who makes up his mind not to stick close to his own
hearth-stone all his life!"
As I was thus eating my supper and meditating, a little man, who had
been sitting in a dim corner of the room over a glass of wine, darted
out of his nook at me like a spider. He was quite short and crooked,
and he had a big ugly head, with a long hooked nose and sparse red
whiskers, while his powdered hair stood on end all over his head as
if a hurricane had swept over it. He wore an old-fashioned, threadbare
dress-coat, short, plush breeches, and faded silk stockings. He had
once been in Germany, and prided himself upon his knowledge of German.
He sat down by me and asked a hundred questions, perpetually taking
snuff the while--Was I the _servitore_? When did we arrive? Had we
gone to Roma? All this I myself did not know, and really I could not
understand his gibberish. "_Parlez-vous français_?" I asked him at
last in my distress. He shook his big head, and I was very glad, for
neither did I speak French. But it was of no use, he had taken me in
hand, and went on asking question after question; the more we parleyed
the less we understood each other, until at last we both grew angry,
and I actually thought the Signor would have liked to peck me with his
hooked beak, until the maids, who had been listening to our confusion
of tongues, laughed heartily at us. I put down my knife and fork and
went out of doors; for in this strange land I, with my German tongue,
seemed to have sunk down fathoms deep into the sea, where all sorts
of unfamiliar, crawling creatures were gliding about me, peopling the
solitude and glaring and snapping at me.
Outside, the summer night was warm and inviting. From the distant
vineyards a laborer's song now and then fell on the ear; there was
lightning low on the horizon, and the landscape seemed to tremble and
whisper in the moonlight. Sometimes I thought I perceived a tall,
dim figure gliding behind the hazel hedge in front of the house and
peeping through the twigs, and then all would be motionless. Suddenly
Herr Guido appeared on the balcony above me. He did not see me, and
began to play with great skill on a zither which he must have found in
the house, singing to it like a nightingale:
"When the yearning heart is stilled
As in dreams, the forest sighing,
To the listening earth replying,
Tells the thoughts with which 'twas filled:
Days long vanished, soothing sorrow--
From the Past a light they borrow,
And the heart is gently thrilled."
I do not know whether he sang any more, for I had stretched myself on
a bench outside the door, and I fell asleep in the warm air from sheer
exhaustion.
A couple of hours must have passed, when I was roused by the winding
of a post-horn, which sounded merrily in my dreams for a while before
I fully recovered consciousness. At last I sprang up; day was
already dawning on the mountains, and I felt through all my limbs the
freshness of the morning. Then it occurred to me that by this time we
ought to be far on our way. "Aha!" I thought, "now it is my turn to
laugh. How Herr Guido will shake his sleepy, curly head when he hears
me outside!" So I went close beneath the window in the little garden
at the back of the house, stretched my limbs well in the morning air,
and sang merrily--
"If the cricket's chirp we hear,
Then be sure the day is near;
When the sun is rising--then
'Tis good to go to asleep again."
The window of the room where my masters were stood open, but all
within was quiet; the breeze alone rustled the leaves of the vine that
clambered into the window itself. "What does this mean?" I exclaimed
in surprise, and ran into the house, and through the silent corridors,
to the room. But when I opened the door my heart stood still with
dismay; the room was perfectly empty; not a coat, not a hat, not a
boot, anywhere. Only the zither upon which Herr Guido had played was
hanging on the wall, and on the table in the centre of the room lay
a purse full of money, with a card attached to it. I took it to
the window, and could scarcely trust my eyes when I read, in large
letters, "For the Herr Receiver!"
But what good could it all do me if I could not find my dear, merry
masters again? I thrust the purse into my deep coat-pocket, where it
plumped down as into a well and almost pulled me over backward. Then I
rushed out, and made a great noise, and waked up all the maids and men
in the house. They could not imagine what was the matter, and thought
I must have gone crazy. But they were not a little amazed when they
saw the empty nest. No one knew anything of my masters. One maid
only had observed--so far as I could make out from her signs and
gesticulations--that Herr Guido, when he was singing on the balcony on
the previous evening, had suddenly screamed aloud, and had then rushed
back into the room to the other gentleman. And once, when she waked
in the night afterward, she had heard the tramp of a horse. She peeped
out of the little window of her room, and saw the crooked Signor, who
had talked so much to me, on a white horse, galloping so furiously
across the field in the moonlight that he bounced high up from his
saddle; and the maid crossed herself, for he looked like a ghost
riding upon a three-legged horse. I did not know what in the world to
do.
Meanwhile, however, our carriage was standing before the door ready to
start, and the impatient postilion blew his horn fit to burst, for he
had to be at the next station at a certain hour, because everything
had been ordered with great exactitude in the way of changing horses.
I ran once more through all the house, calling the painters, but no
one made answer; the inn-people stared at me, the postilion cursed,
the horses neighed, and, at last, completely dazed, I sprang into the
carriage, the hostler shut the door behind me, the postilion cracked
his whip, and away I went into the wide world.
CHAPTER V
We drove on now over hill and dale, day and night. I had no time for
reflection, for wherever we arrived the horses were standing ready
harnessed. I could not talk with the people, and my signs and gestures
were of no use; often just in the midst of a fine dinner the postilion
wound his horn, and I had to drop knife and fork and spring into
the carriage again without knowing whither I was going, or why or
wherefore I was obliged to hurry on at such a rattling pace.
Otherwise the life was not unpleasant. I reclined upon the soft
cushions first in one corner of the carriage and then in the other,
and took note of countries and people, and when we drove through
the villages I leaned both arms on the window of the carriage, and
acknowledged the courtesy of the men who took off their hats to me, or
else I kissed my hand like an old acquaintance to the young girls at
the windows, who looked surprised, and stared after me as long as the
carriage was in sight.
But a day came when I was in a terrible fright. I had never counted
the money in the purse left for me, and I had to pay a great deal to
the postmasters and innkeepers everywhere, so that before I was aware,
the purse was empty. When I first discovered this I had an idea of
jumping out of the carriage and making my escape, the next time we
drove through a lonely wood. But I could not make up my mind to give
up the beautiful carriage and leave it all alone, when, if it were
possible, I would gladly have driven in it to the end of the world.
So I sat buried in thought, not knowing what to do, when all at once
we turned aside from the highway. I shouted to the postilion to ask
him where he was going, but, shout as I would, the fellow never made
any answer save "_Si, si, Signore_!" and on he drove over stock and
stone till I was jolted from side to side in the carriage.
I was not at all pleased, for the high-road ran through a charming
country, directly toward the setting sun, which was bathing the
landscape in a sea of splendor, while before us, when we turned aside,
lay a dreary hilly region, broken by ravines, where in the gray depths
darkness had already set in. The further we drove, the lonelier and
drearier grew the road. At last the moon emerged from the clouds, and
shone through the trees with a weird, unearthly brilliancy. We had
to go very slowly in the narrow rocky ravines, and the continuous,
monotonous rattle of the carriage reechoed from the walls on either
side, as if we were driving through a vaulted tomb. From the depths
of the forest came a ceaseless murmur of unseen water-falls, and the
owlets hooted in the distance "Come too! come too!" As I looked at the
driver, I noticed for the first time that he wore no uniform and was
not a postilion; he seemed to be growing restless, turning his head
and looking behind him several times. Then he began to drive quicker,
and as I leaned out of the carriage a horseman came out of the
shrubbery on one side of the road, crossed it at a bound directly in
front of our horses, and vanished in the forest on the other side.
I felt bewildered; as far as I could see in the bright moonlight the
rider was that very same crooked little man who had so pecked at me
with his hooked nose in the inn, and mounted, too, on the same
white horse. The driver shook his head and laughed aloud at such
horsemanship, then quickly turned to me and said a great deal very
eagerly, not a word of which did I understand, and then he drove on
more rapidly than ever.
I was rejoiced soon afterward when I perceived a light glimmering in
the distance. Gradually more and more lights appeared, and at last we
passed several smoke-dried huts clinging like swallows' nests to the
rocks. As the night was warm, the doors stood open, and I could see
into the lighted rooms, and all sorts of ragged figures gathered about
the hearths. We rattled on through the quiet night, along a steep,
stony road leading up a high mountain. Soon lofty trees and hanging
vines arched completely over us, and anon the heavens became visible,
and we could overlook in the depths a distant circle of mountains,
forests, and valleys. On the summit of the mountain stood a grand old
castle, its many towers gleaming in the brilliant moonlight. "God
be thanked!" I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and on the tiptoe of
expectation as to whither I was being conducted.
A good half-hour passed, however, before we reached the gate-way of
the castle. It led under a broad round tower, the summit of which was
half ruined. The driver cracked his whip three times, so that the old
castle reëchoed, and a flock of startled rooks flew forth from every
sheltered nook and careered wildly overhead with hoarse caws. Then the
carriage rolled on through the long, dark gate-way. The iron shoes of
the horses struck fire upon the stone pavement, a large dog barked,
the wheels thundered along the vaulted passage, the rooks' hoarse
cries resounded, and amidst all this horrible hubbub we reached a
small, paved courtyard.
"A queer post-station this," I thought, when the coach stopped. The
coach door was opened, and a tall old man with a small lantern scanned
me grimly from beneath his bushy eyebrows. He then took my arm and
helped me to alight from the coach as if I had been a person of
quality. Outside, before the castle door, stood a very ugly old woman
in a black camisole and petticoat, with a white apron and a black
cap, the long point of which in front almost touched her nose. A large
bunch of keys hung on one side of her waist, and she held in her hand
an old-fashioned candelabrum with two lighted wax candles. As soon as
she saw me she began to duck and curtsey and to talk volubly. I did
not understand a word, but I scraped innumerable bows, and felt very
uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, the old man had peered into every corner of the coach with
his lantern, and grumbled and shook his head upon finding no trace
of trunk or luggage. The driver, without asking for the usual
_pour-boire_, proceeded to put up the coach in an old shed on one side
of the courtyard, while the old woman by all sorts of courteous signs
invited me to follow her. She showed the way with her wax candles
through a long, narrow passage, and up a little stone staircase.
As we passed the kitchen a couple of maids poked their heads
inquisitively through the half-open door, and stared at me, as they
winked and nodded furtively to each other, as if they had never in all
their lives seen a man before. At last the old woman opened a door,
and for a moment I was quite dazed; the apartment was spacious and
very handsome, the ceiling decorated with gilded carving and the walls
hung with magnificent tapestry portraying all sorts of figures and
flowers. In the centre of the room stood a table spread with cutlets,
cakes, salad, fruit, wine, and confections, enough to make one's mouth
water. Between the windows hung a tall mirror, reaching from the floor
to the ceiling.
I must say that all this delighted me. I stretched myself once or
twice, and paced the room to and fro with much dignity, after which I
could not resist looking at myself in such a large mirror. Of a truth
Herr Lionardo's new clothes became me well, and I had caught an ardent
expression of eye from the Italians, but otherwise I was just such
a whey-face as I had been at home, with only a soft down on my upper
lip.
Meanwhile, the old woman ground away with her toothless jaws, as if
she were actually chewing the end of her long nose. She made me sit
down, chucked me under the chin with her lean fingers, called me
"_poverino_," and leered at me so roguishly with her red eyes that one
corner of her mouth twitched half-way up her cheek as she at last left
the room with a low courtesy.
I sat down at the table, and a young, pretty girl came in to wait on
me. I made all sorts of gallant speeches to her, which she did not
understand, but watched me curiously while I applied myself to
the viands with evident enjoyment; they were delicious. When I had
finished and rose from table, she took a candle and conducted me to
another room, where were a sofa, a small mirror, and a magnificent bed
with green silk curtains. I inquired by signs whether I were to sleep
there. She nodded assent, but I could not undress while she stood
beside me as if she were rooted to the spot. At last I went and got a
large glass of wine from the table in the next room, drank it off, and
wished her "_Felicissima notte_!" for I had managed to learn that much
Italian. But while I was emptying the glass at a draught she suddenly
burst into a fit of suppressed giggling, grew very red, and went into
the next room, closing the door behind her. "What is there to laugh
at?" thought I in a puzzle. "I believe Italians are all crazy."
Still in anxiety lest the postilion should begin to blow his horn
again, I listened at the window, but all was quiet outside. "Let him
blow!" I thought, undressed myself, and got into the magnificent bed,
where I seemed to be fairly swimming in milk and honey! The old linden
in the court-yard rustled, a rook now and then flew off the roof, and
at last, completely happy, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER VI
When I awoke, the beams of early morning were shining on the green
curtains of my bed. At first I could not remember where I was. I
seemed to be still driving in the coach, where I had been dreaming
of a castle in the moonlight, and of an old witch and her pale
daughter.
I sprang hastily out of bed, dressed myself, and, looking about my
room, perceived in the wainscoting a small door, which I had not seen
the night before. It was ajar; I opened it, and saw a pretty little
room looking very fresh and neat in the early dawn. Some articles of
feminine apparel were lying in disorder over the back of a chair, and
in a bed beside it lay the girl who had waited upon me the evening
before. She was sleeping soundly, her head resting upon her bare white
arm, over which her black curls were straying. "How mortified she
would be if she knew that the door was open!" I said to myself, and
I crept back into my room, bolting the door after me, that the girl
might not be horrified and ashamed when she awoke.
Not a sound was yet to be heard outside, except from an early robin
that was singing his morning song, perched upon a spray growing out of
the wall beneath my window. "No," said I, "you shall not shame me by
singing all alone your early hymn of praise to God!" I hastily fetched
my fiddle, which I had laid upon the table the night before, and left
the room. Everything in the castle was silent as death, and I was a
long while finding my way through the dim corridors out into the open
air.
There I found myself in a large garden extending half-way down the
mountain, its broad terraces lying one beneath the other like huge
steps. But the gardening was slovenly. The paths were all grass-grown,
the yew figures were not trimmed, but stretched long noses and caps a
yard high into the air like ghosts, so that really they must have been
quite fearsome at nightfall. Linen was hanging to dry on the broken
marble statues of an unused fountain; here and there in the middle
of the garden cabbages were planted beside some common flowers;
everything was neglected, in disorder, and overgrown with tall weeds,
among which glided varicolored lizards. On all sides through the
gigantic old trees there was a distant, lonely prospect of range after
range of mountains stretching as far as the eye could reach.
After I had been sauntering about through this wilderness for a while
in the dawn, I descried upon the terrace below me, striding to and fro
with folded arms, a tall, slender, pale youth in a long brown surtout.
He seemed not to perceive me, and shortly seated himself upon a stone
bench, took a book out of his pocket, read very loud from it, as if he
were preaching, looked up to heaven at intervals, and leaned his head
sadly upon his right hand. I looked at him for a long time, but at
last I grew curious to know why he was making such extraordinary
gestures, and I went hastily toward him. He had just heaved a profound
sigh, and sprang up startled as I approached. He was completely
confused, and so was I; we neither of us knew what to say, and we
stood there bowing, until he made his escape, striding rapidly through
the shrubbery. Meanwhile, the sun had arisen over the forest; I
mounted on the stone bench, and scraped my fiddle merrily, so that the
quiet valleys reëchoed. The old woman with the bunch of keys, who had
been searching anxiously for me all through the castle to call me to
breakfast, appeared upon the terrace above me, and was surprised that
I could play the fiddle so well. The grim old man from the castle came
too, and was as much amazed, and at last the maids came, and they all
stood up there together agape, while I fingered away, and wielded my
bow in the most artistic manner, playing cadenzas and variations until
I was downright tired.
The castle was a mighty strange place! No one dreamed of journeying
further. It was no inn or post-station, as I learned from one of the
maids, but belonged to a wealthy count. When I sometimes questioned
the old woman as to the count's name and where he lived, she only
smirked as she had done on the evening of my arrival, and slyly
pinched me and winked at me archly as if she were out of her senses.
If on a warm day I drank a whole bottle of wine, the maids were sure
to giggle when they brought me another; and once when I wanted to
smoke a pipe, and informed them by signs of my desire, they all burst
into a fit of foolish laughter. But most mysterious of all was a
serenade which often, and always upon the darkest nights, sounded
beneath my window. A guitar was played fitfully, soft, low chords
being heard from time to time. Once I imagined I heard some one down
below call up, "Pst! pst!" I sprang out of bed and, putting my head
out of the window, called, "Holla! who's there?" But no answer came; I
only heard the rustling of the shrubbery, as if some one were hastily
running away. The large dog in the court-yard, roused by my shout,
barked a couple of times, and then all was still again. After this the
serenade was heard no more.
Otherwise my life here was all that mortal could desire. The worthy
Porter knew well what he was talking about when he was wont to declare
that in Italy raisins dropped into one's mouth of themselves. I lived
in the lonely castle like an enchanted prince. Wherever I went the
servants treated me with the greatest respect, though they all knew
that I had not a farthing in my pocket. I had but to say, "Table,
be spread," and lo, I was served with delicious viands, rice, wine,
melons, and Parmesan cheese. I lived on the best, slept in the
magnificent canopied bed, walked in the garden, played my fiddle, and
sometimes helped with the gardening. I often lay for hours in the tall
grass, and the pale youth in his long surtout--he was a student and a
relative of the old woman's, and was spending his vacation here--would
pace around me in a wide circle, muttering from his book like a
conjurer, which was always sure to send me to sleep. Thus day after
day passed, until, what with the good eating and drinking, I began
to grow quite melancholy. My limbs became limp from perpetually doing
nothing, and I felt as if I should fall to pieces from sheer laziness.
One sultry afternoon, I was sitting in the boughs of a tall tree that
overhung the valley, gently rocking myself above its quiet depths. The
bees were humming among the leaves around me; all else was silent
as the grave; not a human being was to be seen on the mountains, and
below me on the peaceful meadows the cows were resting in the high
grass. But from afar away the note of a post-horn floated across
the wooded heights, at first scarcely audible, then clearer and more
distinct. On the instant my heart reechoed an old song which I had
learned when at home at my father's mill from a traveling journeyman,
and I sang--
"Whenever abroad you are straying,
Take with you your dearest one;
While others are laughing and playing,
A stranger is left all alone.
"And what know these trees, with their sighing,
Of an older, a lovelier day?
Alas, o'er yon blue mountains lying,
Thy home is so far, far away!
"The stars in their courses I treasure,
My pathway to her they shone o'er;
The nightingale's song gives me pleasure,
It sang nigh my dearest one's door.
"When starlight and dawn are contending,
I climb to the mountain-tops clear;
Thence gazing, my greeting I'm sending
To Germany, ever most dear."
It seemed as if the post-horn in the distance would fain accompany
my song. While I was singing, it came nearer and nearer among the
mountains, until at last I heard it in the castle court-yard; I got
down from the tree as quickly as possible, in time to meet the old
woman with an opened packet coming toward me. "Here is something too
for you," she said, and handed me a neat little note. It was without
address; I opened it hastily, and on the instant flushed as red as a
peony, and my heart beat so violently that the old woman observed my
agitation. The note was from--my Lady fair, whose handwriting I had
often seen at the bailiff's. It was short: "All is well once more; all
obstacles are removed. I take a private opportunity to be the first to
write you the good news. Come, hasten back. It is so lonely here, and
I can scarcely bear to live since you left us. Aurelia."
As I read, my eyes grew dim with rapture, alarm, and ineffable
delight. I was ashamed in presence of the old woman, who began to
smirk and wink odiously, and I flew like an arrow to the loneliest
nook of the garden. There I threw myself on the grass beneath the
hazel-bushes and read the note again, repeating the words by heart,
and then re-reading them over and over, while the sunlight danced
between the leaves upon the letters, so that they were blended and
blurred before my eyes like golden and bright-green and crimson
blossoms. "Is she not married, then?" I thought; "was that young
officer her brother, perhaps, or is he dead, or am I crazy, or--but no
matter!" I exclaimed at last, leaping to my feet. "It is clear enough,
she loves me! she loves me!"
When I crept out of the shrubbery the sun was near its setting. The
heavens were red, the birds were singing merrily in the woods,
the valleys were full of a golden sheen, but in my heart all was a
thousand times more beautiful and more glad.
I shouted to them in the castle to serve my supper out in the garden.
The old woman, the grim old man, the maids--I made them all come and
sit at table with me under the trees. I brought out my fiddle and
played, and ate and drank between-whiles. Then they all grew merry;
the old man smoothed the grim wrinkles out of his face, and emptied
glass after glass, the old woman chattered away--heaven knows about
what, and the maids began to dance together on the green-sward. At
last the pale student approached inquisitively, cast a scornful glance
at the party, and was about to pass on with great dignity. But I
sprang up in a twinkling, and, before he knew what I was about,
seized him by his long surtout and waltzed merrily round with him.
He actually began to try to dance after the latest and most approved
fashion, and footed it so nimbly that the moisture stood in beads upon
his forehead, his long coat flew round like a wheel, and he looked
at me so strangely withal, and his eyes rolled so, that I began to be
really afraid of him, and suddenly released him.
The old woman was very curious to know the contents of the note,
and why I was so very merry of a sudden. But the matter was far too
intricate for me to be able to explain it to her. I merely pointed
to a couple of storks that were sailing through the air far above our
heads, and said that so must I go, far, far away. At this she opened
her bleared eyes wide, and cast a sinister glance first at me and then
at the old man. After that, I noticed as often as I turned away that
they put their heads together and talked eagerly, glancing askance
toward me from time to time.
This puzzled me. I pondered upon what scheme they could be hatching,
and I grew more quiet. The sun had long set, so I wished them all good
night and betook myself thoughtfully to my bedroom.
I felt so happy and so restless that for a long while I paced the
apartment to and fro. Outside, the wind was driving black, heavy
clouds high above the castle-tower; the nearest mountain-summit could
be scarcely discerned in the thick darkness. Then I thought I heard
voices in the garden below. I put out my candle and sat down at the
window. The voices seemed to come nearer, speaking in low tones, and
suddenly a long ray of light shot from a small lantern concealed
under the cloak of a dark figure. I instantly recognized the grim old
steward and the old housekeeper. The light flashed in the face of the
old woman, who looked to me more hideous than ever, and upon the blade
of a long knife which she held in her hand. I could plainly see that
both of them were looking up at my window. Then the steward folded his
cloak more closely, and all was dark and silent.
"What do they want," I thought, "out in the garden, at this hour?" I
shuddered; I could not help recalling all the stories of murders that
I had ever heard--all the tales of witches and robbers who slaughtered
people that they might devour their hearts. Whilst I was filled with
such thoughts, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs softly, then
very softly along the narrow passage directly to my door; and at the
same time I thought I heard voices whispering together. I ran hastily
to the other end of the room and behind a large table, which I could
lift and bang against the door as soon as anything stirred outside.
But in the darkness I upset a chair, which made a tremendous crash.
In an instant all was profound silence outside. I listened behind the
table, staring at the door as if I could pierce it with my eyes, which
felt as if they were starting from my head. When I had kept so quiet
for a while that the buzzing of a fly could have been plainly heard,
I distinguished the sound of a key softly put into the keyhole of my
door on the outside. I was just about to make a demonstration with my
table, when the key was turned slowly three times round in the lock,
and then cautiously withdrawn, after which the footsteps retreated
along the passage and down the staircase.
I took a long breath. "Oho!" I thought, "they have locked me up that
all may be easy when I am sound asleep." I tried the door, and found
it locked, as was also the other door, behind which the pale maid
slept. This had never been so before since I had been at the castle.
Here was I imprisoned in a foreign land! The Lady fair undoubtedly was
even now standing at her window and looking across the quiet garden
toward the high-road, to see if I were not coming from the toll-house
with my fiddle. The clouds were scudding across the sky; time was
passing--and I could not get away. Ah, but my heart was sore; I did
not know what to do. And if the leaves rustled outside, or a rat
gnawed behind the wainscot, I fancied I saw the old woman gliding in
by a secret door and creeping softly through the room, with that long
knife in hand.
As, given over to such fancies, I sat on the side of my bed, I heard,
the first time for a long while, the music beneath my window. At the
first twang of the guitar a ray of light darted into my soul. I opened
the window, and called down softly, that I was awake. "Pst, pst!" was
the answer from below. Without more ado, I thrust the note into my
pocket, took my fiddle, got out of the window, and scrambled down the
ruinous old wall, clinging to the vines growing from the crevices.
One or two crumbling stones gave way, and I began to slide faster and
faster, until at last I came down upon my feet with such a sudden bump
that my teeth rattled in my head.
Scarcely had I thus reached the garden when I felt myself embraced
with such violence that I screamed aloud. My kind friend, however,
clapped his hand on my mouth, and, taking my arm, led me through the
shrubbery to the open lawn. Here, to my astonishment, I recognized the
tall student, who had a guitar slung around his neck by a broad silk
ribbon. I explained to him as quickly as possible that I wished to
escape from the garden. He seemed perfectly aware of my wishes, and
conducted me by various covert pathways to the lower door in the high
garden wall. But when we reached it, it was fast locked! The student,
however, seemed to be quite prepared for this; he produced a large key
and cautiously unlocked it.
When we found ourselves in the forest, and I was about to inquire of
him the best road to the nearest town, he suddenly fell upon one knee
before me, raised a hand aloft, and began to curse and to swear in the
most horrible manner. I could not imagine what he wanted; I could
hear frequent repetitions of "_Iddio_" and "_cuore_" and "_amore_" and
"_furore_!" But when he began hobbling close up to me on both knees,
I grew positively terrified, I perceived clearly that he had lost his
wits, and I fled into the depths of the forest without looking back.
I heard the student behind me shouting like one possessed, and soon
afterward a rough voice from the castle shouting in reply. I was sure
they would pursue me. The road was entirely unknown to me; the night
was dark; I should probably fall into their hands. Therefore I climbed
up into a tall tree to await my opportunity to escape.
From here I could distinguish one voice after another calling in the
castle. Several links appeared in the garden, and cast a weird lurid
light over the old walls and down the mountain out into the black
night. I commended my soul to the Almighty, for the confused uproar
grew louder and nearer. At last the student, bearing aloft a torch,
ran past my tree below me so fast that the skirt of his surtout flew
out behind him in the wind. After this the tumult gradually retreated
to the other side of the mountain; the voices sounded more and more
distant, and at last the wind alone sighed through the silent forest.
I then descended from my tree and ran breathless down into the valley
and out into the night.
CHAPTER VII
I hurried on for the rest of the night and the next day, for there was
a din in my ears for a long time, as if all the people from the castle
were after me, shouting, waving torches, and brandishing long knives.
On the way I learned that I was only five or six miles from Rome,
whereat I could have jumped for joy. As a child at home I had heard
wonderful stories of gorgeous Rome, and as I lay on my back in the
grass on Sunday afternoons near the mill, and everything around was so
quiet, I used to picture Rome out of the clouds sailing above me, with
wondrous mountains and abysses, around the blue sea, with golden gates
and lofty gleaming towers, where angels in shining robes were singing.
The night had come again, and the moon shone brilliantly, when at
last I emerged from the forest upon a hilltop, and saw the city lying
before me in the distance. The sea gleamed afar off, the heavens
glittered with innumerable stars, and beneath them lay the Holy City,
a long strip of mist, like a slumbering lion on the quiet earth,
watched and guarded by mountains around like shadowy giants.
I soon reached an extensive, lonely heath, where all was gray and
silent as the grave. Here and there a ruined wall was still standing,
or some strangely-gnarled trunk of a tree; now and then night-birds
whirred through the air, and my own shadow glided long and black in
the solitude beside me. They say that a primeval city lies buried
here, and that Frau Venus makes it her abode, and that sometimes the
old pagans rise up from their graves and wander about the heath and
mislead travelers. I cared nothing, however, for such tales, but
walked on steadily, for the city arose before me more and more
distinct and magnificent, and the high castles and gates and golden
domes gleamed wondrously in the moonlight, as if angels in golden
garments were actually standing on the roofs and singing in the quiet
night.
At last I passed some humble houses, and then through a gorgeous
gate-way into the famous city of Rome. The moon shone bright as day
among the palaces, but the streets were empty, except for some lazy
fellow lying dead asleep on a marble step in the warm night air.
The fountains plashed in the silent squares, and from the gardens
bordering the street the trees added their murmur, and filled the air
with refreshing fragrance.
As I was sauntering on, not knowing--what with delight, moonlight, and
fragrance--which way to turn, I heard a guitar touched in the depths
of a garden. "Great heavens!" I thought, "the crazy student with his
long surtout has been secretly following me all this time." But in
a moment a lady in the garden began to sing deliciously. I stood
spellbound; it was the voice of the Lady fair! and the selfsame
Italian song which she often used to sing at her open window!
Then the dear old time recurred so vividly to my mind that I could
have wept bitterly; I saw the quiet garden before the castle in the
early dawn, and thought how happy I had been among the shrubbery
before that stupid fly flew up my nose. I could restrain myself no
longer, but clambered over the gilded ornaments surmounting the grated
gate-way and leaped down into the garden whence the song proceeded. As
I did so I perceived a slender white figure standing in the distance
behind a poplar-tree, looking at me in amazement; but in an instant it
had turned and fled through the dim garden toward the house so quickly
that in the moonlight it seemed to glide. "It was she, herself!" I
exclaimed, and my heart throbbed with delight; I recognized her on the
instant by her pretty little fleet feet. It was unfortunate that in
clambering over the gate I had slightly twisted my ankle, and had to
limp along for a minute or two before I could run after her toward
the house. In the meanwhile the doors and windows had been closed. I
knocked modestly, listened, and then knocked again. I seemed to hear
low laughter and whispering within the house, and once I was almost
sure that a pair of bright eyes peeped between the jalousies in the
moonlight. But finally all was silent.
"She does not know that it is I," I thought; I took out my fiddle, and
promenaded to and fro on the path before the house and sang the song
of the Lady fair and played over all my songs that I had been wont
to play on lovely summer nights in the castle garden, or on the
bench before the toll-house so that the sound should reach the castle
windows. But it was all of no use; no one stirred in the entire house.
Then I put away my fiddle sadly, and seated myself upon the door-step,
for I was very weary with my long march. The night was warm; the
flower-beds before the house sent forth a delicious fragrance, and a
fountain somewhere in the depths of the garden plashed continuously. I
thought dreamily of azure flowers, of dim, green, lovely, lonely spots
where brooks were rippling and gay birds singing, until at last I fell
sound asleep.
When I awoke the fresh air of morning was playing over me; the birds
were already awake and twittering in the trees around, as if they were
making game of me. I started up and looked about; the fountain in
the garden was still playing, but nothing was to be heard within the
house. I peeped through the green blinds into one of the rooms, where
I could see a sofa and a large round table covered with gray linen.
The chairs were all standing against the wall in perfect order;
the blinds were down at all the windows, as if the house had been
uninhabited for example, with many a loving thought of my fair,
distant home.
Meanwhile, the painter had arranged near the window one of the frames
upon which a large piece of paper was stretched. An old hovel was
cleverly drawn in charcoal upon the paper, and within it sat the
Blessed Virgin with a lovely, happy face, upon which there was withal
a shade of melancholy. At her feet in a little nest of straw lay the
Infant Jesus--very lovely, with large serious eyes. Without, upon the
threshold of the open door were kneeling two shepherd lads with staff
and wallet. "You see," said the painter, "I am going to put your head
upon one of these shepherds, and so people will know your face and,
please God, take pleasure in it long after we are both under the sod,
and are ourselves kneeling happily before the Blessed Mother and her
Son like those shepherd lads." Then he seized an old chair, the back
of which came off in his hand as he lifted it. He soon fitted it into
its place again, however, pushed it in front of the frame, and I had
to sit down on it, and turn my face sideways to him. I sat thus
for some minutes perfectly still, without stirring. After a while,
however--I am sure I do not know why--I felt that I could endure it
no longer; every part of me began to twitch, and besides, there hung
directly in front of me a piece of broken looking-glass into which I
could not help glancing perpetually, making all sorts of grimaces from
sheer weariness. The painter, noticing this, burst into a laugh, and
waved his hand to signify that I might leave my chair. My face upon
the paper was already finished, and was so exactly like me that I was
immensely pleased with it.
The young man went on painting in the cool morning, singing as he
worked, and sometimes looking from the open window at the glorious
landscape. I, in the meantime, spread myself another piece of bread
and butter, and walked up and down the room, looking at the pictures
leaning against the wall. Two of them pleased me especially. "Did you
paint these, too?" I asked the painter. "Not exactly," he replied.
"They are by the famous masters Leonardo da Vinci and Guido Reni; but
you know nothing about them." I was nettled by the conclusion of his
remark. "Oh," I rejoined very composedly, "I know those two masters as
well as I know myself." He opened his eyes at this. "How so?" he
asked hastily. "Well," said I, "I traveled with them day and night, on
horseback, on foot, and driving at a pace that made the wind whistle
in my ears, and I lost them both at an inn, and then traveled post
alone in their coach, which went bumping on two wheels over the rocks,
and--" "Oho! oho!" the painter interrupted me, staring at me as if he
thought me mad. Then he suddenly burst into a fit of laughter. "Ah,"
he cried, "now I begin to understand. You traveled with two painters
called Guido and Lionardo?" When I assented, he sprang up and looked
me all over from head to foot. "I verily believe," he said "that
actually--Can you play the violin?" I struck the pocket of my coat so
that my fiddle gave forth a tone, and the painter went on: "There was
a Countess here lately from Germany, who made inquiries in every nook
and corner of Rome for those two painters and a young musician with a
fiddle." "A young Countess from Germany!" I cried in an ecstasy. "Was
the Porter with her?" "Ah, that I do not know," replied the painter.
"I saw her only once or twice at the house of one of her friends,
who does not live in the city. Do you know this face?" he went on,
suddenly lifting the covering from a large picture standing in a
corner. In an instant I felt as we do when in a dark room the shutters
are opened and the rising sun flashes in our eyes. It was--the lovely
Lady fair! She was standing in the garden, in a black velvet gown,
lifting her veil from her face with one hand, and looking abroad
over a distant and beautiful landscape. The longer I looked the more
vividly did it seem to be the castle garden, and the flowers and
boughs waved in the wind, while in the depths of green I could see
my little toll-house, and the high-road, and the Danube, and in the
distance the blue mountains.
"'Tis she! 'tis she!" I exclaimed at last, and, seizing my hat, I
ran out of the door and down the long staircase, while the astonished
painter called after me to come back toward evening, and we might
perhaps learn something more.
CHAPTER VIII
I ran in a great hurry through the city to present myself immediately
at the house, in the garden of which the Lady fair had been singing
yesterday evening. The streets were full of people; gentlemen and
ladies were enjoying the sunshine and exchanging greetings, elegant
coaches rolled past, and the bells in all the towers were summoning
to mass, making wondrous melody in the air above the heads of the
swarming crowd. I was intoxicated with delight, and with the hubbub,
and ran on in my joy until at last I had no idea where I was. It was
like enchantment; the quiet Square with the fountain, and the garden
and the house, seemed the fabric of a dream, which had vanished in the
clear light of day.
I could not make any inquiries, for I did not know the name of the
Square. At last it began to be very sultry; the sun's rays darted down
upon the pavement like burning arrows, people crept into their houses,
the blinds everywhere were closed, and the street became once more
silent and dead. I threw myself down in despair in front of a fine,
large house with a balcony resting upon pillars and affording a deep
shade, and surveyed, first the quiet city, which looked absolutely
weird in its sudden noonday solitude, and anon the deep blue,
perfectly cloudless sky, until, tired out, I fell asleep. I dreamed
that I was lying in a lonely green meadow near my native village; a
warm summer rain was falling and glittering in the sun, which was just
setting behind the mountains, and whenever the raindrops fell upon the
grass they turned into beautiful, bright flowers, so that I was soon
covered with them.
What was my astonishment when I awoke to find a quantity of beautiful,
fresh flowers lying upon me and beside me! I sprang up, but could see
nothing unusual, except that in the house above me there was a window
filled with fragrant shrubs and flowers, behind which a parrot talked
and screamed incessantly. I picked up the scattered flowers, tied them
together, and stuck the nosegay in my button-hole. Then I began to
discourse with the parrot; it amused me to see him get up and down in
his gilded cage with all sorts of odd twists and turns of his head,
and always stepping awkwardly over his own toes. But before I was
aware of it he was scolding me for a _furfante_! Even though it were
only a senseless bird, it irritated me. I scolded him back; we both
got angry; the more I scolded in German, the more he abused me in
Italian.
Suddenly I heard some one laughing behind me. I turned quickly, and
perceived the painter of the morning. "What nonsense are you at now!"
he said. "I have been waiting for you for half an hour. The air has
grown cooler: we will go to a garden in the suburbs where you will
find several fellow-countrymen, and perhaps learn something further of
the German Countess."
I was charmed with this proposal, and we set out immediately, the
parrot screaming out abuse of me as I left him.
After we had walked for a long while outside of the city, ascending by
a narrow, stony pathway an eminence dotted with villas and vineyards,
we reached a small garden very high up, where several young men and
maidens were sitting in the open air about a round table. As soon
as we made our appearance they all signed to us to keep silence,
and pointed toward the other end of the garden, where in a large,
vine-wreathed arbor two beautiful ladies were sitting opposite each
other at a table. One was singing, while the other accompanied her
on the guitar. Between them stood a pleasant-looking gentleman, who
occasionally beat time with a small baton. The setting sun shone
through the vine-leaves, upon the fruits and flasks of wine with which
the table was provided, and upon the plump, white shoulders of the
lady with the guitar. The other one grimaced so that she looked
convulsed, but she sang in Italian in so extremely artistic a manner
that the sinews in her neck stood out like cords.
Just as she was executing a long cadenza with her eyes turned up to
the skies, while the gentleman beside her held his baton suspended in
the air waiting the moment when she would fall into the beat again,
the garden gate was flung open, and a girl looking very much heated,
and a young man with a pale, delicate face, entered, quarreling
violently. The conductor, startled, stood with raised baton like a
petrified conjurer, although the singer had some time before snapped
short her long trill and had arisen angrily from the table. All the
others turned upon the new arrivals in a rage. "You savage," some one
at the round table called out, "you have interrupted the most perfect
tableau of the description which the late Hoffmann gives on page 347
of the _Ladies' Annual_ for 1816 of the finest of Hummel's pictures
exhibited in the autumn of 1814 at the Berlin Art-Exposition!" But
it did no good. "What do I care," the young man retorted, "for your
tableau of tableaux! My picture any one may have; my sweetheart I
choose to keep for myself. Oh, you faithless, false-hearted girl!" he
went on to his poor companion, "you fine critic to whom a painter is
nothing but a tradesman, and a poet only a money-maker; you care for
nothing save flirtation! May you fall to the lot, not of an honest
artist, but of an old Duke with a diamond-mine and beplastered with
gold and silver foil! Out with the cursed note that you tried to hide
from me! What have you been scribbling? From whom did it come, or to
whom is it going?"
But the girl resisted him steadfastly, and the more the other young
men present tried to soothe and pacify the angry lover, the more
he scolded and threatened; particularly as the girl herself did not
restrain her little tongue, until at last she extricated herself,
weeping aloud, from the confused coil, and unexpectedly threw herself
into my arms for protection. I immediately assumed the correct
attitude; but since the rest paid no attention to us, she suddenly
composed her face and whispered hastily in my ear, "You odious
Receiver! it is all on your account. There, stuff the wretched note
into your pocket; you will find out from it where we live. When you
approach the gate, at the appointed hour, turn into the lonely street
on the right hand."
I was too much amazed to utter a word, for, now that I looked closely,
I recognized her at once; actually it was the pert lady's-maid of
the Castle who had brought me the flask of wine on that lovely Sunday
afternoon. She never looked as pretty as now, when, heated by her
quarrel, she leaned against my shoulder, and her black curls hung down
over my arm. "But, dear ma'amselle," I said in astonishment, "how do
you come--" "For heaven's sake, hush!--be quiet!" she replied, and in
an instant, before I could fairly collect myself, she had left me and
had fled across the garden.
Meanwhile, the others had almost entirely forgotten the original cause
of the turmoil, and now took a pleasing interest in proving to the
young man that he was intoxicated--a great disgrace for an honorable
painter. The stout, smiling gentleman from the arbor, who was--as I
afterward learned--a great connoisseur and patron of Art, and who was
always ready to lend his aid for the love of Science, had thrown aside
his baton, and showed his broad face, fairly shining with good humor,
in the midst of the thickest confusion, zealously striving to restore
peace and order, but regretting between-whiles the loss of the long
cadenza, and of the beautiful tableau which he had taken such pains to
arrange.
In my heart all was as serenely bright as on that blissful Sunday when
I had played on my fiddle far into the night at the open window where
stood the flask of wine. Since the rumpus showed no signs of abating,
I hastily pulled out my violin, and without more ado played an Italian
dance, popular among the mountains, which I had learned at the old
castle in the forest.
All turned their heads to listen. "Bravo! Bravissimo! A delicious
idea!" cried the merry connoisseur of Art, running from one to another
to arrange a rustic _divertissement_, as he called it. He made a
beginning himself by leading out the lady who had played the guitar
in the arbor. Thereupon he began to dance with extraordinary artistic
skill, and describe all sorts of letters on the grass with the points
of his toes, really trilling with his feet, and now and then jumping
pretty high in the air. But he soon had enough of it, for he was
rather corpulent. His jumps grew fewer and clumsier, until at last he
withdrew from the circle, puffing violently, and mopping the moisture
from his forehead with a snowy pocket-handkerchief. Meanwhile, the
young man, who had regained his composure, brought from the inn some
castanets, and before I was aware all were dancing merrily beneath the
trees. The sun had set, but the crimson sky in the west cast bright
reflections among the shadows, and upon the old walls and the
half-buried columns covered with ivy in the depths of the garden,
while below the vineyards we could see the Eternal City bathed in the
evening glow. The dance in the still, clear air was charming, and
my heart within me laughed to see how the slender girls and the
lady's-maid glided among the trees with arms upraised like heathen
wood-nymphs, and kept time to the music with their castanets. At last
I could no longer restrain myself; I joined their ranks, and danced
away merrily, still fiddling all the time.
I had been hopping about thus for some minutes, not noticing that the
others were beginning to be tired and were dropping out of the
dance, when I felt some one twitch me by the coat-tail. It was the
lady's-maid. "Don't be a fool," she said under her breath; "you are
jumping about like a kid! Read your note, and come soon; the beautiful
young Countess awaits you." She slipped out of the garden in the
twilight and vanished among the vineyards.
My heart beat fast; I longed to follow her. Fortunately, a waiter was
just lighting the lantern over the garden gate. I took out my note,
which contained a somewhat rudely penciled plan of the gate and the
streets leading to it, just as I had been directed by the lady's-maid,
and in addition the words "Eleven o'clock, at the little door."
Two long hours to wait! Nevertheless I should have set out
immediately, for I could not stay still, had not the painter, who had
brought me hither, rushed up. "Did you speak to the girl?" he asked.
"I cannot see her now. It was the German Countess's maid." "Hush,
hush!" I replied; "the Countess is still in Rome." "So much the
better," said the painter; "come then and drink her health." And in
spite of all I could say he forced me to return to the garden with
him.
It looked quite deserted. The merry company had departed, and were
sauntering toward Rome, each lad with his lass upon his arm. We
could hear them talking and laughing among the vineyards in the quiet
evening, until at last their voices died away in the valley below,
lost in the rustling of the trees and the murmur of the stream. I
stayed with my painter and Herr Eckbrecht, which was the name of the
other young painter who had been quarreling with the maid. The moon
shone brilliantly through the tall, dark evergreens; a candle on the
table before us flickered in the breeze and gleamed over the wine
spilled copiously around it. I had to sit down with my companions, and
my painter chatted with me about my native village, my travels, and
my plans for the future. Herr Eckbrecht had seated upon his knee the
pretty girl who had brought us our wine, and was teaching her the
accompaniment of a song on the guitar. Her slender fingers soon picked
out the correct chords, and they sang together an Italian song;
first he sang a verse, and then the girl sang the next; it sounded
deliciously, in the clear, bright evening. When the girl was called
away, Herr Eckbrecht, taking no further notice of us, leaned back on
his bench with his feet on a low stool and played and sang many an
exquisite song. The stars glittered; the landscape turned to silver in
the moonlight; I thought of the Lady fair, and of my far-off home, and
quite forgot the painter at my side. Herr Eckbrecht had occasionally
to tune his instrument; whereat he grew downright angry, and at last
he screwed a string so tight that it broke, whereupon he tossed aside
the guitar and sprang to his feet, noticing for the first time that
my painter had laid his head on his arm upon the table and was fast
asleep. He hastily wrapped around him a white cloak which hung on a
bough near by, then suddenly paused, glanced keenly at my painter, and
then at me several times, then seated himself on the table directly
in front of me, cleared his throat, settled his cravat, and instantly
began to hold forth to me. "Beloved hearer and fellow-countryman,"
he said, "since the bottles are nearly empty, and morality is
indisputably the first duty of a citizen when the virtues are on the
wane, I feel myself moved, out of sympathy for a fellow-countryman,
to present for your consideration a few moral axioms. It might be
supposed," he went on, "that you are a mere youth, whereas your coat
has evidently seen its best years; it might be supposed that you had
leaped about like a satyr; nay, some might maintain that you are a
vagabond, because you are out here in the country and play the fiddle;
but I am influenced by no such superficial considerations; I form my
judgment on your delicately chiseled nose; I take you for a strolling
genius." His ambiguous phrases irritated me; I was about to retort
sharply. But he gave me no chance to speak. "Observe," he said, "how
you are puffed up by a modicum of praise. Retire within yourself
and ponder upon your perilous vocation. We geniuses--for I am one
too--care as little for the world as it cares for us; without any ado,
in the seven-league boots which we bring into the world with us, we
stride on directly into eternity. A most lamentable, inconvenient
straddling position this--one leg in the future, where nothing is to
be discerned but the rosy morn and the faces of future children, the
other leg still in the middle of Rome, in the Piazza del Popolo,
where the entire present century would fain seize the opportunity to
advance, and clings to the boot tight enough to pull the leg off! And
then all this restlessness, wine-bibbing, and hunger solely for an
immortal eternity! And look you at my comrade there on the bench,
another genius; his time hangs heavy on his hands here and now, what
under heaven is he to do in eternity? Yes, my highly-esteemed comrade,
you and I and the sun rose early together this morning, and have
pondered and painted all day long, and it was all beautiful--and now
the drowsy night passes its furred sleeve over the world and wipes
out all the colors." He kept on talking for a long while, his hair all
disheveled with dancing and drinking, and his face looking deadly pale
in the moonlight.
But I was seized with a horror of him and of his wild talk, and when
he turned and addressed the sleeping painter I took advantage of the
opportunity and slipped round the table, without being perceived
by him, and out of the garden. Thence, alone and glad at heart, I
descended through the vine-trellises into the wide moonlit valley.
The clocks in the city were striking ten. Behind me, in the quiet
night, I still heard an occasional note of the guitar, and at times
the voices of the two painters, going home at last, were audible. I
ran on as quickly as possible, that they might not overtake me.
At the city-gate I turned into the street on the right hand, and
hurried on with a throbbing heart among the silent houses and gardens.
To my amazement, I suddenly found myself in the very Square with the
fountain, for which, by daylight, I had vainly searched. There stood
the solitary summer-house again in the glorious moonlight, and again
the Lady fair was singing the same Italian song as on the evening
before. In an ecstasy I tried first the low door, then the house door,
and at last the big garden gate, but all were locked. Then first it
occurred to me that eleven had not yet struck. I was irritated by the
slow flight of time, but good manners forbade my climbing over the
garden gate as I had done yesterday. Therefore I paced the lonely
Square to and fro for a while, and at last again seated myself upon
the basin of the fountain and resigned myself to meditation and calm
expectancy.
The stars twinkled in the skies; the Square was quiet and deserted; I
listened with delight to the song of the Lady fair, as it mingled with
the ripple of the fountain. All at once I perceived a white figure
approach from the opposite side of the Square and go directly
toward the little garden door. I peered eagerly through the dazzling
moonlight--it was the queer painter in his white cloak. He drew forth
a key quickly, unlocked the door, and, before I knew it, was within
the garden.
I had from the first entertained a special dislike of this painter on
account of his nonsensical talk. But now I fell into a rage with him.
"The low fellow is certainly intoxicated again," I thought; "he has
got the key from the maid, and intends to surprise, and perhaps to
assault, the Lady fair." And I rushed precipitately through the low
door, which was still open, into the garden.
When I entered, all was quiet and lonely. The folding-doors of the
summer-house were open, and a ray of lamplight issuing from it played
upon the grass and flowers near. Even from a distance I could see the
interior. In a magnificent apartment, hung with green and partially
illumined by a lamp with a white shade, the lovely Lady fair with
her guitar was reclining on a silken lounge, never dreaming, in her
innocence, of the danger without.
I had not much time, however, to look, for I perceived the white
figure among the shrubbery, stealthily approaching the summer-house
from the opposite side, while the song floating on the air from the
house was so melancholy that it went to my very soul. I therefore took
no long time for reflection, but broke off a stout bough from a tree,
and rushed at the white-cloaked figure, shouting "Murder!" so that the
garden rang again.
The painter when he beheld me appear thus unexpectedly took to his
heels, screaming frightfully. I screamed louder still. He ran toward
the house, and I after him, and I had very nearly caught him, when I
became entangled in some plaguy trailing vines, and measured my length
upon the ground just before the front door.
"So it is you, is it, you fool!" I heard some one say above me. "You
frightened me nearly to death." I picked myself up, and when I had
wiped my eyes clear of dust, I saw before me the lady's-maid, from
whose shoulders the white cloak was just falling. "But," said I, in
confusion, "was not the painter here?" "He was," she replied, saucily;
"at least his cloak was, which he put around me when I met him at the
gate, because I was cold." The Lady fair, hearing the noise, sprang
up from the lounge and came out to us. My heart beat as if it would
burst; but what was my dismay when I looked at her, and instead of the
lovely Lady fair saw an entire stranger!
She was a rather tall, stout lady, with a haughty, hooked nose and
high-arched black eyebrows, very beautiful and imposing. She looked
at me so majestically out of her big, glittering eyes that I was
overwhelmed with awe. So confused was I that I could only make bow
after bow, and at last I attempted to kiss her hand. But she snatched
it from me, and said something in Italian to her maid which I could
not understand.
Meanwhile, the racket I had made had aroused the entire neighborhood.
Dogs barked, children screamed, and men's voices were heard,
approaching the garden. The Lady gave me another glance, as though she
would have liked to pierce me through and through with fiery bullets,
then turned hastily and went into the room, with a haughty, forced
laugh, slamming the door directly in my face. The maid seized me by
the sleeve and pulled me toward the garden gate.
"Your stupidity is beyond belief!" she said in the most spiteful way
as we went along. I too was furious. "What the devil did you mean,"
I said, "by telling me to come here?" "That's just it!" exclaimed
the girl. "My Countess favored you so--first threw flowers out of
the window to you, sang songs--and _this_ is her reward! But there is
absolutely nothing to be done with you; you positively throw away
your luck." "But," I rejoined, "I meant the Countess from Germany,
the lovely Lady fair--" "Oh," she interrupted me, "she went back to
Germany long ago, with your crazy passion for her. And you'd better
run after her! No doubt she is pining for you, and you can play the
fiddle together and gaze at the moon, only for pity's sake let me see
no more of you!"
All was confusion about us by this time. People from the next garden
were climbing over the fence armed with clubs, others were searching
among the paths and avenues; frightened faces in nightcaps appeared
here and there in the moonlight; it seemed as if the devil had let
loose upon us a mob of evil spirits. The lady's-maid was nowise
daunted. "There, there goes the thief!" she called out to the people,
pointing across the garden. Then she pushed me out of the gate and
clapped it to behind me.
There I stood once more beneath the stars in the deserted Square,
as forlorn as when I had seen it first the day before. The fountain,
which had but now seemed to sparkle as merrily in the moonlight as if
cherubs were flitting up and down in it, plashed on, but all joy and
happiness were buried beneath its waters. I determined to turn my back
forever on treacherous Italy, with its crazy painters, its oranges,
and its lady's-maids, and that very hour I wandered forth through the
gate.
CHAPTER IX
On guard the faithful mountains stand:
"Who wanders o'er the moorland there
From other climes, in morning fair?"
And as I look far o'er the land,
For very glee my heart laughs out.
The joyous "vivats" then I shout;
Watchword and battle-cry shall be:
Austria, for thee!
The landscape far and near I know;
The birds and brooks and forests fair
Send me their greetings on the air;
The Danube sparkles down below;
St. Stephen's spire far in the blue
Seems waving me a welcome too.
Warm to its core my heart shall be,
Austria, for thee!
I was standing on the summit of a mountain whence the first view of
Austria can be had, and I waved my hat joyfully in the air as I sang
the last verse, when suddenly from the forest behind me some fine
instrumental music joined in. I turned quickly and perceived three
young fellows in long blue cloaks, one playing a hautboy, another a
clarionet, and the third, who wore an old three-cornered hat, a horn.
They played an accompaniment to my song, which made the woods ring
again. I, nothing loath, took out my fiddle, and played and sang with
a will. Then one glanced meaningly at the others; he who played the
horn stopped puffing out his cheeks and took the instrument down from
his mouth; at last they all ceased playing, and stared at me. I ended
my performance also, and in turn stared at them. "We supposed," the
cornetist said at last, "from the length of the gentleman's coat that
he was a traveling Englishman, journeying afoot here to admire the
beauties of nature, and we thought we might perhaps earn a trifle for
our own travels. But the gentleman seems to be a musician himself."
"Properly speaking, a Receiver," I interposed, "and I come at present
directly from Rome; but, as it is some time since I received anything,
I have paid my way with my violin." "'Tis not worth much nowadays,"
said the cornetist, as he betook himself to the woods again, and
began fanning with his cocked hat a fire that they had kindled there.
"Wind-instruments are more profitable," he continued. "When a noble
family is seated quietly at their mid-day meal, and we unexpectedly
enter their vaulted vestibule and all three begin to blow with all our
might, a servant is sure to come running out to us with money or food,
just to get rid of the noise. But will you not share our repast?"
The fire in the forest was burning cheerily, the morning was fresh; we
all sat down on the grass, and two of the musicians took from the fire
a can in which there was coffee with milk. Then they brought forth
some bread from the pockets of their cloaks, and each dipped it in the
can and drank turn about with such relish that it was a pleasure to
see them. But the cornetist said, "I never could endure the black
slops," and, after handing me a huge slice of bread and butter, he
brought out a bottle of wine, from which he offered me a draught. I
took a good pull at it, but had to put it down in a hurry with my face
all of a pucker, for it tasted like "old Gooseberry." "The wine of
the country," said the cornetist; "but Italy has probably spoilt your
German taste."
Then he rummaged in his wallet, and finally produced from among all
sorts of rubbish an old, tattered map of the country, in the corner
of which the emperor in his royal robes was still to be discerned, a
sceptre in his right hand, the orb in his left. This map he carefully
spread out upon the ground; the others drew nearer, and they all
consulted together as to their route.
"The vacation is nearly over," said one; "let us turn to the left as
soon as we leave Linz, so as to be in Prague in time." "Upon my word!"
exclaimed the cornetist. "Whom do you propose to pipe to on that road?
Nobody there save wood-choppers and charcoal-burners; no culture nor
taste for art--no station where one can spend a night for nothing!"
"Oh, nonsense!" rejoined the other. "I like the peasants best;
they know where the shoe pinches, and are not so particular if
you sometimes blow a false note." "That is, you have no _point
d'honneur_," said the cornetist. "_Odi profanum vulgus et arceo_, as
the Latin has it." "Well, there must be some churches on the road,"
struck in the third; "we can stop at the Herr Pastors'." "No, I thank
you," said the cornetist; "they give little money, but long sermons on
the folly of philandering about the world when we might be acquiring
knowledge, and they wax specially eloquent when they sniff in me a
future member of their fraternity. No, no, _clericus clericum non
decimat_. But why be in such a hurry? The Herr Professors are still
at Carlsbad, and are sure not to be precise about the very day." "Nay,
_distinguendum est inter et inter_," replied the other; "_quod licet
Jovi, non licet bovi_!"
I now saw that they were students from Prague, and I conceived a
great respect for them, especially as they spoke Latin like their
mother-tongue. "Is the gentleman a student?" the cornetist asked me. I
replied modestly that I had always been very fond of study, but that I
had had no money. "That's of no consequence," said the cornetist; "we
have neither money nor rich patrons, but we get along by mother-wit.
_Aurora musis amica_, which means, being interpreted, 'Do not waste
too much time at breakfast.' But when the bells at noon echo from
tower to tower, and from mountain to mountain, and the scholars crowd
out of the old dark lecture-room, and swarm shouting through the
streets, we betake us to the Capuchin monastery, to the father who
presides in the refectory, where there is sure to be a table spread
for us, or if not actually spread, there will be at least a dish
apiece, and we fall to, and perfect ourselves at the same time in our
Latin. So you see we study right ahead from day to day. And when at
last the vacation comes, and all the others depart for their homes,
by coach or on horseback, then we stroll forth through the streets and
through the city gate with our instruments under our cloaks and the
world before us."
I can't tell how it was, but, while he spoke, the thought that such
learned people were so forlorn and forsaken in this world went to
my very heart. And then I thought of myself, and how I was not much
better off, and the tears came into my eyes. The cornetist eyed me
askance. "I wouldn't give a fig," he went on, "to travel with horses,
and coffee, and freshly-made beds, and nightcaps and boot-jacks, all
ordered beforehand. It's just the delightful part of it that, when
we set out early in the morning, and the birds of passage are winging
their flight high in the air above us, we do not know what chimney is
smoking for us today, and can never foresee what special piece of luck
may befall us before evening." "Yes," said the other, "and wherever we
go, and take out our instruments, people are merry; and when we play
at noon in the vestibule of some great country-house, the maids will
dance before the door, and their masters and mistresses will have the
drawing-room door opened a little, the better to hear the music, and
the clatter of plates and the smell of the roast float out through the
chink, and the young misses at table well-nigh twist their necks off
to see the musicians outside." "That's true!" exclaimed the cornetist,
with sparkling eyes. "Let who will pore over their compendiums, we
choose to study in the vast picture-book which the dear God spreads
open before us! Yes, the gentleman may believe me, we make the right
sort of fellows, who know how to preach to the peasants from the
pulpit and to bang the cushion, so that the clodpoles down below are
ready to burst with humiliation and edification."
At hearing them talk thus, I became so pleased and interested that I
longed to be a student too. I could have listened forever, for I enjoy
the conversation of men of learning, from whom much is to be gained.
But we had no real, sensible conversation, for one of the students
was worried because the vacation was so nearly at an end. He put his
clarionet together, set up a sheet of music on his knees, and began to
practice a difficult passage from a mass which was to be played when
they returned to Prague. There he sat and fingered and played away,
sometimes so false that it fairly pierced your ears and you couldn't
hear your own voice.
Suddenly the cornetist exclaimed in his bass tones, "I have it!" and
down came his fist on the map before him. The other stopped practising
for a moment, and looked at him in surprise. "Hark ye," said the
cornetist, "there is a castle not far from Vienna, and in that
castle there is a porter, and that porter is my cousin! Dearest
fellow-students, that must be our goal; we must pay our respects to
my cousin, and he will arrange for our further journey." When I heard
that, I sprang to my feet. "Doesn't he play on the bassoon?" I
cried. "Is he not tall and straight, with a big, prominent nose?" The
cornetist nodded, upon which I embraced him so enthusiastically that
his three-cornered hat fell off, and we all immediately determined
to take the mail-boat on the Danube to the castle of the beautiful
Countess.
When we arrived at the wharf all was ready for departure. The fat host
before whose inn the ship had lain all night was standing broad and
cheery in his door-way, which he quite filled, shouting out all sorts
of jokes and farewell speeches, while from every window a girl's head
was poked out nodding to the sailors, who were just carrying the last
packages aboard. An elderly gentleman with a gray overcoat and a
black neckerchief, who was also going in the boat, stood on the shore
talking very earnestly with a slim young fellow in leather breeches
and a trig scarlet jacket, mounted on a magnificent chestnut. To my
great surprise, they seemed to glance at times toward me, and to be
speaking of me. At last the old gentleman laughed, and the slim young
fellow cracked his riding-whip and galloped off through the fresh
morning across the shining landscape, with the larks soaring above
him.
Meanwhile, the students and I had combined our resources. The
captain laughed and shook his head when the cornetist counted out our
passage-money to him in coppers, for which we had diligently searched
every corner of our pockets. I shouted aloud when I once more saw the
Danube before me; we hurried aboard, the captain gave the signal, and
away we glided in the brilliant morning sunshine past the meadows and
the mountains.
The birds in the woods were singing, and the morning bells echoed afar
from the villages on each side of us, while overhead the larks' clear
notes were now and then heard. On the boat a canary-bird in its cage
trilled and twittered back so that it was a delight to listen to it.
It belonged to a pretty young girl who was on the boat with us. She
kept the cage close beside her, and under the other arm she had a
small bundle of linen; she sat by herself, quite still, looking in
great content, now at her new traveling-shoes, which peeped out from
beneath her petticoats, and now down at the water, while the morning
sun shone on her white forehead, above which the hair was neatly
parted. I noticed that the students would have liked to engage her in
polite discourse, for they kept passing to and fro before her, and the
cornetist, whenever he did so, cleared his throat, and settled, first
his cravat, and then his three-cornered hat. But their courage failed
them, and moreover the girl cast down her eyes as soon as they,
approached her.
They seemed, besides, to stand in special awe of the elderly gentleman
in the gray overcoat, who was now sitting on the other side of the
boat, and whom they took for a divine. He held an open breviary, in
which he was reading, looking up from it frequently to admire the
lovely scenery, while the gilt edges of the book and the gay pictures
of saints laid between its leaves shone brilliantly in the sun light.
He was perfectly well aware, too, of what was going on around him,
and soon recognized the birds by their feathers, for before long he
addressed one of the students in Latin, whereupon all three approached
him, took off their hats, and made answer also in Latin.
Meanwhile, I had seated myself at the prow of the boat, where, highly
delighted, I dangled my legs above the water, gazing, while the boat
glided onward and the waves below me leaped and foamed, constantly
into the blue distance, watching towers and castles one after another
emerge from the dim depths of green, grow and grow upon the sight,
and finally recede and vanish behind us. "If I had but wings at this
moment!" I thought; and at last in my impatience I drew forth my dear
violin and played all my oldest pieces, which I had learned at home
and at the castle of the Lady fair.
All at once some one behind me tapped me on the shoulder. It was
the reverend gentleman, who had laid aside his book, and had been
listening to me for a while. "Aha," he said laughing, "aha, my young
_ludi magister_ is forgetting to eat and drink!" Whereupon he bade me
put away my fiddle and take a bit of luncheon with him, and he then
led me to a pleasant little arbor which the boatmen had erected in
the centre of the boat out of young birches and firs. He had a table
placed beneath it, and I and the students, and even the young girl,
were invited to sit down around it upon the casks and packages.
The reverend gentleman now produced cold meat and bread and butter,
which had all been carefully wrapped in paper, and took from a case
several bottles of wine and a silver goblet, gilt inside, which he
filled, tasted first himself, then smelled, tasted again, and finally
presented to each of us in turn. The students sat bolt upright on
their casks, and only sipped a little, so great was their awe. The
girl, too, just dipped her little beak in the goblet, glancing shyly
first at me and then at the students; but the oftener she looked at us
the bolder she grew.
At last she informed the reverend gentleman that she was leaving her
home for the first time, to go into service at a certain castle, and
as she spoke I blushed all over, for the castle she mentioned was
that of the Lady fair. "Then she is my future lady's maid!" I thought,
staring at her, and feeling almost giddy. "There is soon to be a grand
wedding at the castle," said his reverence. "Yes," replied the girl,
who would have liked to learn more of the matter; "they say it is an
old secret attachment, but that the Countess could never be brought to
give her consent." His reverence replied only by "hm! hm!" refilling
his goblet, and sipping from it with a thoughtful air. I leaned
forward with both elbows on the table, that I might lose no word of
the conversation. His reverence observed it. "Let me tell you," he
began again, "that both Countesses sent me forth to discover whether
the bridegroom be not in the country hereabouts. A lady wrote from
Rome that he left there some time ago." When he began about the
lady in Rome I blushed again. "Is your reverence acquainted with the
bridegroom?" I asked, in confusion. "No," replied the old gentleman;
"but they say he is a gay bird." "Oh, yes," said I, hastily, "a bird
that escapes as soon as it can from every cage, and sings gaily when
it regains its freedom." "And wanders about in foreign countries," the
old gentleman continued, composedly, "goes everywhere at night,
and sleeps on door-steps in the daytime." That vexed me extremely.
"Reverend sir," I exclaimed, with some heat, "you have been falsely
informed. The bridegroom is a slender, moral, promising youth, who has
been living in luxury in an old castle in Italy, and has associated
solely with Countesses, famous painters, and lady's-maids, who knows
perfectly well how to take care of his money, if he had any, who--"
"Come, come, I had no idea that you knew him so well," the divine here
interrupted me, laughing so heartily that he grew quite purple in the
face and the tears rolled down his cheeks. "But I heard," the girl
interposed, "that the bridegroom was a stout, very wealthy gentleman."
"Good heavens, yes, yes, to be sure! Confusion worse confounded!"
exclaimed his reverence, laughing so that it brought on a fit of
coughing. When he had somewhat recovered himself, he raised his goblet
aloft and cried, "Here's to the bridal pair!" I did not know what
to make of the reverend gentleman and his talk, and I was ashamed,
because of my adventures in Rome, to tell him here before all these
people that I myself was the missing thrice happy bridegroom.
The goblet kept passing from hand to hand; the reverend gentleman
had a kind word for every one, so that all liked him, and finally the
entire company chatted gaily together. The students grew more and more
loquacious, recounting their experiences in the mountains, and at last
brought out their instruments and played away merrily. The cool breeze
from the water sighed through the leaves of the arbor, the afternoon
sun gilded the woods and vales which flew past us, while the shores
echoed back the notes of the horn. And when the reverend gentleman,
stimulated by the music, grew more and more genial, and told us
stories of his youth, how in vacation-time he too had wandered over
hills and dales, and had been often hungry and thirsty, but always
happy, and how, in fact, a student's whole life, from its first day in
the narrow, dry lecture-room to its last, is one long vacation, then
the students drank all around once more, and struck up a song, that
reechoed among the distant mountains
"The birds are southward winging
Their yearly, airy flight,
And roving lads are swinging
Their caps in morning's light;
We students thus are going,
And, when the gates are nigh,
Our trumpets shall be blowing,
In token of good-bye.
A long farewell we give thee,
O Prague, for we must leave thee,
_Et habeat bonam pacem,
Qui sedet post fornacem_!
"When through the towns we're going
At night, the windows shine,
Behind their curtains showing
Full many a damsel fine.
We play at many a gate-way,
And when our throats are dry
We call mine host, and straightway
He treats us generously;
And o'er a goblet foaming
We rest awhile from roaming.
_Venit ex sua domo--
Beatus ille homo_!
"When roaming through the forest
Cold Boreas whistles shrill,
'Tis then our need is sorest;
Wet through on plain and hill,
Our cloaks the winds are tearing,
Our shoes are worn and old,
Still playing, onward faring,
In spite of rain and cold.
_Beatus ille homo
Qui sedet in sua domo
Et sedet post fornacem,
Et habeat bonam pacem!"_
I, the captain, and the girl, although we did not understand Latin,
joined gaily in the last lines of each verse; but I was the gayest of
all, for I had caught a glimpse in the distance of my toll-house, and
soon afterward the castle shone among the trees in the light of the
setting sun.
CHAPTER X
The boat touched the shore, and we all left it as quickly as possible,
and scattered about in the meadows, like birds suddenly set free from
the cage. The reverend gentleman took a hasty leave of us, and strode
off toward the castle. The students repaired to a retired dingle,
where they could shake out their cloaks, wash themselves in the brook,
and shave one another. The new lady's-maid, with her canary-bird and
her bundle, set out for an inn, the hostess of which I had recommended
to her as an excellent person, and where she wished to change her
gown before she presented herself at the castle. As for me--the lovely
evening shone right into my heart, and as soon as all the rest had
disappeared I lost not a moment, but ran directly to the castle
garden.
My toll-house, which I had to pass, was standing on the old spot, the
tall trees in the castle garden were still murmuring above it, and
a yellow-hammer, which always used to sing at sunset in the
chestnut-tree before the window, was singing again, as if nothing in
the world had happened since I last heard him. The toll-house window
was open; I ran up to it with delight and looked in. There was no one
there, but the clock in the corner was ticking away, the writing-table
stood by the window, and the long pipe in the corner as of old. I
could not resist the temptation to climb through the window and seat
myself at the writing-table before the big account-book. Again the
sunlight shone golden-green through the chestnut boughs upon the
figures in the open book, again the bees buzzed in and out of the
window, and again the yellow-hammer's jocund song sounded from the
tree outside. All at once the door of the sleeping-room opened, and a
tall, old Receiver, in my dotted dressing-gown, entered! He paused on
the threshold upon beholding me thus unexpectedly, took his spectacles
quickly from his nose, and looked angrily at me. Not a little alarmed,
I started up, and, without saying a word, ran out of the door and
through the little garden, where I was very nearly tripped up by the
confounded potato-vines which the old Receiver had planted, evidently
by the Porter's advice, in place of my flowers. I heard him as he
came out of the door scolding after me, but I was mounted atop of the
garden wall, and gazing with a throbbing heart over into the castle
garden.
Ah, how the birds were flitting and twittering and singing! The lawns
and paths were deserted, but the gilded tree-tops nodded a welcome to
me in the evening breeze, and on one side, up through masses of dark
green foliage, gleamed the Danube.
Suddenly I heard sung from the depths of the garden--
"When the yearning heart is stilled
As in dreams, the forest sighing,
To the listening earth replying,
Tells the thoughts with which 'twas filled,
Days long vanished, soothing sorrow--
From the Past a light they borrow,
And the heart is gently thrilled."
The voice and the song were strangely familiar, as if I had heard
them somewhere in a dream. I pondered over and over again, and at last
exclaimed, joyfully, "It is Herr Guido!" swinging myself quickly down
into the garden. It was the selfsame song that he had sung on the
balcony of the Italian inn on that summer evening when I saw him for
the last time.
He went on singing, while I bounded over beds and hedges toward the
singer. But as I emerged from between the last clumps of rose-bushes I
suddenly paused spellbound. For on the green opening beside the little
lake with the swans, clearly illuminated in the ruddy evening light,
on a stone bench sat the lovely Lady fair in a beautiful dress, with
a wreath of red and white roses on her dark-brown hair, and downcast
eyes, tracing lines on the green-sward with her riding-whip, just as
she had sat in the skiff when I was forced to sing her the song of
the Lady fair. Opposite her sat another young lady, with brown curls
clustering on a plump white neck, which was turned toward me; she was
singing to a guitar, while the swans glided in wide circles on the
placid water. All at once the Lady fair raised her eyes, and gave
a scream on perceiving me. The other lady turned round toward me so
quickly that her brown curls fell over her eyes, and when she saw me
she burst into a fit of immoderate laughter, sprang up from the bench,
and clapped her hands thrice. Whereupon a crowd of little girls in
white short skirts with red and green sashes came running out from
among the rose-bushes, so that I could not imagine where they had all
been hiding. They had long garlands of flowers in their hands, and
quickly formed a circle around me, dancing and singing--
"With ribbons gay of violets blue
The bridal wreath we bring thee;
The merry dance we lead thee to,
And wedding songs we sing thee.
Ribbons gay of violets blue,
Bridal wreath we bring thee."
It was from _Der Freischütz_. I recognized some of the little singers;
they were girls from the village. I pinched their cheeks, and tried to
escape from the circle, but the roguish little things would not let
me out. I could not tell what to make of it all, and stood there
perfectly dazed.
Suddenly a young man in hunting costume emerged from the shrubbery.
Hardly could I believe my eyes--it was merry Herr Lionardo! The little
girls now opened the circle and stood as if spell-bound on one foot,
with the other stretched out, holding the garlands of flowers high
above their heads with both hands. Herr Lionardo took the hand of the
lovely Lady fair, who had risen, and had only now and then glanced at
me, and, leading her up to me, said--
"Love--on this point philosophers are unanimous--is one of the most
courageous qualities of the human heart; it shatters with a glance of
fire the barriers of rank and station, the world is too confined for
it, eternity too brief. It is, so to speak, a poet's robe, in which
every dreamer enwraps himself once in this cold world, for a journey
to Arcadia. And the farther two parted lovers wander from each other,
the more beautiful and the richer are the folds of the robe, the more
surprising and wonderful is its extent, as it sweeps behind them, so
that one really cannot travel far without treading on a couple of such
trains. O beloved Herr Receiver, and bridegroom! although wrapped in
this robe you reached the shores of the Tiber, the little hands of
your present bride held you fast by the extreme end of the train, and,
however you might fiddle and fume, you had to return within the magic
influence of her beautiful eyes. And since this is so, you two dear,
foolish people, wrap yourselves both up in this blessed robe, forget
all the rest of the world, love like turtle-doves, and be happy!"
Hardly had Herr Lionardo finished his speech when the other young lady
who had sung the song approached me, crowned me with a wreath of fresh
myrtle, and as she was arranging it, with her face close to my own,
archly sang--
"And therefore do I crown thee,
And therefore love thee so,
Because thou oft hast moved me
With the music of thy bow."
As she retreated a step or two, "Do you remember the robbers who shook
you down from the tree at night?" said she, courtesying, and giving
me so arch a glance that my heart danced within me. Thereupon, without
waiting for an answer, she walked around me. "Actually just the
same, without any Italian affectations! But no! look, look at his fat
pockets!" she exclaimed suddenly to the lovely Lady fair. "Violin,
linen, razor, portmanteau, everything stuffed together!" She turned
me all round as she spoke, and could scarcely say anything more for
laughing. Meanwhile, the lovely Lady fair was quite silent, and could
hardly raise her eyes for shame and confusion. It seemed to me that
at heart she was provoked at all this jesting talk. At last her eyes
filled with tears, and she hid her face on the breast of the other
lady, who first looked at her in surprise and then clasped her
affectionately in her arms.
I stood there as in a dream. The longer I looked at the strange lady
the more clearly I recognized her; she was in truth no other than--the
young painter, Herr Guido!
I did not know what to say, and was just about to question her, when
Herr Lionardo approached her and spoke in an undertone. "Does he not
know yet?" I heard him ask. She shook her head. He reflected for a
moment, and then said aloud, "No, no, he must be told all immediately,
or there will be all kinds of fresh gossip and confusion."
"Herr Receiver," he said, turning to me, "we have not much time at
present, but do me the favor to exhaust your stock of surprise
and wonder as quickly as possible, that you may not hereafter, by
questions, and wonderings, and head-shakings among the people about
here, revive old tales and give rise to new rumors and suspicions." So
saying, he drew me aside into the shrubbery, while Fräulein Guido made
passes in the air with the Lady fair's riding-whip, and shook all her
curls down over her eyes, which did not prevent my seeing that she was
blushing violently.
"Well, then," said Herr Lionardo, "Fräulein Flora, who is trying
to look as if she neither knew nor had heard anything of the whole
affair, had exchanged hearts in a hurry with somebody. Whereupon
somebody else appears, and with sound of trumpet and drum offers her
his heart, and wishes for hers in return. But her heart is already
bestowed upon somebody, and somebody's heart is in her possession, and
that somebody will neither take back his heart nor give back hers. All
the world exclaims--but have you never read any romances?" I shook my
head. "Well, then, at all events you have taken part in one. In brief,
there was such a jumble with the hearts that somebody--that is, I--had
to take matters in hand. I sprang on my horse one warm summer night,
mounted Fräulein Flora as the painter Guido on another, and rode
toward the south, to conceal her in one of my lonely castles in Italy
till all the fuss about the hearts should be over. But on the way we
were tracked, and from the balcony of the Italian inn before which you
kept, sound asleep, such admirable watch, Flora suddenly caught sight
of our pursuer." "The crooked Signor, then--" "Was a spy. Therefore we
secretly took to the woods, and left you to travel post alone over
our prearranged route. That misled our pursuer, and my people in the
mountain castle besides; they were hourly expecting the disguised
Flora, and with more zeal than penetration they took you for the
Fräulein. Even here at the castle they thought Flora was among the
mountains; they inquired about her, they wrote to her--did you not
receive a note?" In an instant I produced the note from my pocket:
"This letter, then--?" "Is addressed to me," said Fräulein Flora,
who up to this point had seemed to be paying no attention to our
conversation. She snatched the note from me, read it, and put it
into her bosom. "And now," said Herr Lionardo, "we must hasten to the
castle, where they are all waiting for us. In conclusion, as a matter
of course, and as is fitting for every well-bred romance--discovery,
repentance, reconciliation; but we are all happy together once more,
and the wedding takes place the day after tomorrow!"
Just as he had finished, a terrific racket of drums and trumpets,
horns and clarionets, was suddenly heard in the shrubbery; guns were
fired at intervals, loud cheers were given, the little girls began to
dance again, and heads appeared among the bushes as if they had grown
out of the earth. I ran and leaped about in all the hurry and scurry,
but as it began to grow dark I only gradually recognized all the
faces. The old gardener beat the drum, the students from Prague in
their cloaks played away, and among them the Porter fingered his
bassoon like mad. When I suddenly perceived him thus unexpectedly, I
ran to him and embraced him with enthusiasm, causing him to play quite
out of time. "Upon my word, if he should travel to the ends of
the earth he would never be anything but a goose!" he said to the
students, and then went on blowing away at his bassoon in a fury.
Meanwhile, the lovely Lady fair had privately escaped from all the
noise and confusion, and had fled like a startled fawn far into the
depths of the garden.
I caught sight of her in time and hurried after her. In their zeal
the musicians never noticed us; after a while they thought that we had
decamped to the castle, and then the entire band took up the line of
march in that direction.
We, however, almost at the same moment reached a summer-house on the
borders of the garden, whence through the open window there was a
view of the wide, deep valley. The sun had long since set behind the
mountains, a rosy haze glimmered in the warm fading twilight, through
which the murmur of the Danube ascended clearer and clearer the
stiller grew the air. I looked long at the lovely Countess, who stood
before me heated with her flight and so close that I could almost hear
her heart beat. Now that I was alone with her I could find no words to
speak, so great was my awe of her. At last I took heart of grace, and
clasped in mine one of her little white hands--and in one moment her
head lay on my breast and my arms were around her.
In an instant she extricated herself and turned to the window to cool
her glowing cheeks in the evening air. "Ah," I cried, "my heart is
full to bursting, but it all seems like a dream to me!" "And to me
too," said the lovely Lady fair. "When, last summer," she went on
after a while, "I came back with the Countess from Rome where we
fortunately found Fräulein Flora, and had brought her back with us but
could hear nothing of you either there or here, I never thought all
this would come to pass. It was only at noon today that Jocky, the
good, brisk fellow, came breathless into the court-yard and brought
the news that you had come by the mail-boat." Then she laughed quietly
to herself. "Do you remember," she said, "that time when I came out on
the balcony? It was just such an evening as this, and there was music
in the garden." "And he is really dead?" I asked hastily. "Whom do
you mean?" replied the Lady fair, looking at me in surprise. "Your
ladyship's husband," said I, "who was with you on the balcony." She
flushed crimson. "What strange fancies you have in your head!" she
exclaimed. "That was the Countess's son, who had just returned from
his travels, and, since it happened to be my birthday, he led me out
on the balcony with him that I might have a share of the cheers. Was
that why you ran away?" "Good heavens, yes!" I cried, striking my
forehead with my hand. She shook her head and laughed merrily.
I was so happy there beside her while she went on chatting so
confidingly, that I could have sat listening until morning. I found in
my pocket a handful of almonds which I had brought with me from Italy.
She took some, and we sat and cracked them and gazed abroad over the
quiet country. "Do you see that little white villa," she said after a
while, "gleaming over there in the moonlight? The Count has given us
that, with its garden and vineyard; there is where we are to live. He
found out long ago that we cared for each other, and he is very fond
of you, for if he had not had you with them when he was running
off with Fräulein Flora they would both have been caught before the
Countess had become reconciled to him, and everything would have been
spoiled." "Good heavens! fairest, sweetest Countess," I cried out,
"my head is fairly spinning with all this unexpected and amazing
information; are you talking of Herr Lionardo?" "Yes, yes," she
replied; "that is what he called himself in Italy; he owns all that
property over there, and he is going to marry our Countess's daughter,
the lovely Flora. But why do you call me Countess?" I stared at her.
"I am no Countess," she went on. "Our Countess took me into the castle
and had me educated under her care when my uncle, the Porter, brought
me here a poor little orphan child."
Ah, what a stone fell from my heart at these words! "God bless the
Porter," I said in an ecstasy, "for being our uncle! I always set
great store by him." "And he would be very fond of you," she replied,
"if you would only comport yourself with more dignity, as he expresses
it. You must dress with greater elegance." "Oh," I exclaimed,
enchanted, "an English dress-coat, straw hat, long trousers, and
spurs! And as soon as we're married we will take a trip to Italy--to
Rome--where lovely fountains are playing, and we'll take with us the
Prague students, and the Porter!" She smiled quietly, and gave me a
happy glance, while the music echoed in the distance, and rockets flew
up from the castle above the garden in the quiet night, and the Danube
kept murmuring on, and everything, everything was delightful!
ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO
* * * * *
THE CASTLE OF BONCOURT[37] (1827)
I dream of the days of my childhood,
And shake my silvery head.
How haunt ye my brain, O visions,
Methought ye forgotten and dead!
From the shades of the forest uprises
A castle so lofty and great;
Well know I the battlements, towers,
The arching stone-bridge, and the gate.
The lions look down from the scutcheon
On me with familiar face;
I greet the old friends of my boyhood,
And speed through the courtyard space.
There lies the Sphinx by the fountain;
The fig-tree's foliage gleams;
'Twas there, behind yon windows,
I dreamt the first of my dreams.
I tread the aisle of the chapel,
And search for my fathers' graves--
Behold them! And there from the pillars
Hang down the old armor and glaives.
Not yet can I read the inscription;
A veil hath enveloped my sight,
What though through the painted windows
Glows brightly the sunbeam's light.
Thus gleams, O hall of my fathers,
Thy image so bright in my mind,
From the earth now vanished, the ploughshare
Leaves of thee no vestige behind.
Be fruitful, lov'd soil, I will bless thee,
While anguish o'er-cloudeth my brow;
Threefold will I bless him, whoever
May guide o'er thy bosom the plough.
But I will up, up, and be doing;
My lyre I'll take in my hand;
O'er the wide, wide earth will I wander,
And sing from land to land.
[Illustration: ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO]
* * * * *
THE LION'S BRIDE[38]
With myrtle bedecked and in bridal array,
Comes the keeper's fair daughter, as blooming as May.
She enters the cage of the lion; he lies
Calm and still at her feet and looks up in her eyes.
The terrible beast, of whom men are afraid,
Lies peaceful and tame at the feet of the maid,
While she, in her tender adorable grace,
Is stroking his head as the tears stain her face.
"In the days that are gone, we were playmates so true;
Like brother and sister we played, I and you.
Our love was still constant in joy or in pain--
But alas for the days that will ne'er come again!
"You learned to toss proudly your glorious head,
And roar, as you tossed it, a warning of dread;
I grew from a babe to a woman--you see,
No longer a light-hearted child I can be.
"Oh, would that those days had had never an end,
My splendid strong playmate, my noble old friend!
But soon I must go, so my parents decree,
Away with a stranger--no more am I free.
"A man has beheld me, and fancied me fair;
He has asked for my hand--and the wreath's in my hair!
Dear faithful old comrade, my girlhood is dead;
And my sight is bedimmed with the tears I have shed.
"Do you know what I mean? Ah, your look is a sign!
I have made up my mind, and you need not repine.
But yonder he comes who must lead me away--
So I'll give the last kiss to my playmate today!"
As the last fond farewell with reluctance she took,
The huge frame so trembled the bars even shook;
But when, drawing near a strange man he espied,
A sudden alarm seized the heart of the bride.
The lion stands guard by the door of the cage--
He is lashing his tail, he is roaring with rage.
With threats, with entreaties she bids him to cease,
But in vain--in his might he denies her release.
Without are confusion and cries of despair
"Bring a gun!" shouts the bridegroom; "our one hope is there!
I will snatch her away from his horrible claws * * *"
But the lion defies him with foam-dripping jaws.
The girl makes a last frenzied dash for the door--
But his past love the beast seems to measure no more;
The sweet slender body goes down 'neath his might,
All bleeding and lifeless, a pitiful sight.
Then, as if he knew well what a crime he had wrought,
He throws himself down by her, caring for naught;
He lies all unheeding what dangers remain,
Till the bullet avenging speeds swift through his brain.
* * * * *
WOMAN'S LOVE AND LIFE[39] (1830)
1
Since mine eyes beheld him,
Blind I seem to be;
Wheresoe'er they wander,
Him alone they see.
Round me glows his image,
In a waking dream;
From the darkness rising
Brighter doth it beam.
All is drear and gloomy
That around me lies;
Now my sister's pastimes
I no longer prize;
In my chamber rather
Would I weep alone;
Since my eyes beheld him
Blind methinks I'm grown.
2
He, the best of all, the noblest,
O how gentle! O how kind
Lips of sweetness, eyes of brightness,
Steadfast courage, lucid mind.
As on high, in Heaven's azure,
Bright and splendid, beams yon star,
Thus he in my heaven beameth,
Bright and splendid, high and far.
Wander, wander where thou listest,
I will gaze but on thy beam;
With humility behold it,
In a sad, yet blissful dream.
Hear me not thy bliss imploring
With prayer's silent eloquence?
Know me now, a lowly maiden,
Star of proud magnificence!
May thy choice be rendered happy
By the worthiest alone!
And I'll call a thousand blessings
Down on her exalted throne.
Then I'll weep with tears of gladness;
Happy, happy then my lot!
If my heart should rive asunder,
Break, O heart--it matters not!
3
Is it true? O, I cannot believe it;
A dream doth my senses enthrall;
O can he have made me so happy,
And exalted me thus above all?
Meseems as if he had spoken,
"I am thine, ever faithful and true!"
Meseems--O still am I dreaming--
It cannot, it cannot be true!
O fain would I, rocked on his bosom,
In the sleep of eternity lie;
That death were indeed the most blissful,
In the rapture of weeping to die.
4
Help me, ye sisters,
Kindly to deck me,
Me, O the happy one, aid me this morn!
Let the light finger
Twine the sweet myrtle's
Blossoming garland, my brow to adorn!
As on the bosom
Of my loved one,
Wrapt in the bliss of contentment, I lay,
He, with soft longing
In his heart thrilling,
Ever impatiently sighed for today.
Aid me, ye sisters,
Aid me to banish
Foolish anxieties, timid and coy,
That I with sparkling
Eye may receive him,
Him the bright fountain of rapture and joy.
Do I behold thee,
Thee, my beloved one,
Dost thou, O sun, shed thy beam upon me?
Let me devoutly,
Let me in meekness
Bend to my lord and my master the knee!
Strew, ye fair sisters,
Flowers before him,
Cast budding roses around at his feet!
Joyfully quitting
Now your bright circle,
You, lovely sisters, with sadness I greet.
5
Dearest friend, thou lookest
On me with surprise,
Dost thou wonder wherefore
Tears suffuse mine eyes?
Let the dewy pearl-drops
Like rare gems appear,
Trembling, bright with gladness,
In their crystal sphere.
With what anxious raptures
Doth my bosom swell!
O had I but language
What I feel to tell!
Come and hide thy face, love,
Here upon my breast,
In thine ear I'll whisper
Why I am so blest.
Now the tears thou knowest
Which my joy confessed,
Thou shalt not behold them,
Thou, my dearest, best;
Linger on my bosom,
Feel its throbbing tide;
Let me press thee firmly,
Firmly, to my side!
Here may rest the cradle,
Close my couch beside,
Where it may in silence
My sweet vision hide;
Soon will come the morning,
When my dream will wake,
And thy smiling image
Will to life awake.
6
Upon my heart, and upon my breast,
Thou joy of all joys, my sweetest, best!
Bliss, thou art love; O love, thou art bliss--
I've said it, and seal it here with a kiss.
I thought no happiness mine could exceed,
But now I am happy, O happy indeed!
She only, who to her bosom hath pressed
The babe who drinketh life at her breast;
'Tis only a mother the joys can know
Of love, and real happiness here below.
How I pity man, whose bosom reveals
No joys like that which a mother feels!
Thou look'st on me, with a smile on thy brow,
Thou dear, dear little angel, thou!
Upon my heart, and upon my breast,
Thou joy of all joys, my sweetest, best!
7
Ah, thy first wound hast thou inflicted now!
But oh! how deep!
Hard-hearted, cruel man, now sleepest thou
Death's long, long sleep.
I gaze upon the void in silent grief,
The world is drear;
I've lived and loved, but now the verdant leaf
Of life is sere.
I will retire within my soul's recess,
The veil shall fall;
I'll live with thee and my past happiness,
O thou, my all!
[Illustration: _Permission Franz Hanfstaengl, New York_ MORITZ VON
SCHWIND THE WEDDING JOURNEY]
* * * * *
THE WOMEN OF WEINSBERG[40] (1831)
It was the good King Konrad with all his army lay
Before the town of Weinsberg full many a weary day;
The Guelph at last was vanquished, but still the town held out;
The bold and fearless burghers they fought with courage stout.
But then came hunger, hunger! That was a grievous guest;
They went to ask for favor, but anger met their quest.
"Through you the dust hath bitten full many a worthy knight,
And if your gates you open, the sword shall you requite!"
Then came the women, praying: "Let be as thou hast said,
Yet give us women quarter, for we no blood have shed!"
At sight of these poor wretches the hero's anger failed,
And soft compassion entered and in his heart prevailed.
"The women shall be pardoned, and each with her shall bear
As much as she can carry of her most precious ware;
The women with their burdens unhindered forth shall go,
Such is our royal judgment--we swear it shall be so!"
At early dawn next morning, ere yet the east was bright,
The soldiers saw advancing a strange and wondrous sight;
The gate swung slowly open, and from the vanquished town
Forth swayed a long procession of women weighted down;
For perched upon her shoulders each did her husband bear--
That was the thing most precious of all her household ware.
"We'll stop the treacherous women!" cried all with one intent;
The chancellor he shouted: "This was not what we meant!"
But when they told King Konrad, the good King laughed aloud;
"If this was not our meaning, they've made it so," he vowed,
"A promise is a promise, our loyal word was pledge;
It stands, and no Lord Chancellor may quibble or map hedge."
Thus was the royal scutcheon kept free from stain or blot!
The story has descended from days now half forgot;
'Twas eleven hundred and forty this happened, as I've heard,
The flower of German princes thought shame to break his word.
* * * * *
THE CRUCIFIX[41] (1830)
In hopeless contemplation of his work
The master stood, a frown upon his brow,
Where shame and self-contempt appeared to lurk.
With all his art and knowledge he had now
Portrayed the suffering Savior's image there--
Yet could the marble not with life endow.
He could not make it live, for all his care--
What is not flesh knows not to suffer pain;
Cold stone can none but stone's cold likeness bear.
Beauty and due proportion though it gain,
The chisel's marks will never disappear
And nature wake, howe'er his prayer may strain:
"Ah, turn not from me, Nature! Thou most dear,
I long to raise thee to undreamed of height--
But thou art dumb * * * a sorry bungler's here!"
There entered then a loyal neophyte,
Who looked with reverence on the master's art
And stood beside him, flushed with new delight.
To the same muse was given his young heart,
The selfsame quest of beauty filled his days--
Yet must his soul with endless failure smart.
To him the master: "Scorn is in thy praise!
If so this dull, dead stone thy mind can fill,
To death, not life, thou must have turned thy face!"
Then boldly spoke the youth: "Admire I will!
What though thy Christ for death's repose prepare
So strangely silent and so strangely still,
Yet at a great thing greatly wrought I stare,
And long to match the marvel that I see;
I see what is, and thou what should be there."
The master looked upon him silently,
His youthful strength, his limbs so straight and fine,
And deemed there were no model such as he.
"A prey thou find'st me to despair malign--
How get from lifeless marble life and pain?
Here nature fails, whose secrets else are mine.
To seek a hireling's aid were all in vain;
And sought I thine, though partner of my aims,
Naught but a cold refusal should I gain."
"Nay," said the youth, "in art's and God's high names,
I would perform unwearied, unafraid,
Whate'er of me thy need transcendent claims."
He spoke, and straight his beauty disarrayed,
Showing the fair flower of his youthful grace
Within the guarded workshop's sacred shade.
Entranced the master gazed, and could not chase
A thought that rose unbidden to his mind--
If pain upon that form its lines could trace!
"The help thou off'rest if I am to find,
Thee too the cross must raise above the ground * * *"
Willing, the youth his gracious limbs resigned.
With tight cords first his prey the sculptor bound,
Then brought the hammer and the piercing nails--
A martyr's death must close the destined round!
The first sharp nail went through, and piteous wails
Burst from the youth, but no compassion woke;
An eager eye the look of suffering hails.
With restless haste redoubled, stroke on stroke
Achieved the bleeding model that he sought.
Calmly to work he went; no word he spoke.
A hideous joy upon his features wrought--
For nature now each shade of anguished woe
Upon the expiring lovely form had taught.
Unceasing worked his hands, above, below;
His heart was to all human feeling dead--
But in the marble * * * life began to show!
Whether in prayer the sufferer bowed his head,
Or in despairing torment gnashed his teeth,
Still on the sculptor's flying fingers sped.
The pale, exhausted victim, nigh to death,
As night the third long day of agony
Is ending, murmurs with his last weak breath,
"My God, my God, hast Thou forsaken me?"
The eyes, half raised, sink down, the writhings cease,
The awful crime has reached its term--and see
There, in its glory, stands a masterpiece!
II
"My God, my God, hast Thou forsaken me?"
At midnight in the minster rang the wail;
Who could have raised it? 'Twas a mystery.
At the high altar, where its radiance pale
A tiny lamp threw out, a form was found
To move, whence came the faltering accents frail.
And then it dashed itself upon the ground,
Its forehead 'gainst the stones, and wildly wept;
The vaulted roof reëchoed with the sound.
Long was the vigil that dim figure kept
That seemed by tears so strangely comforted;
None dared its tottering footsteps intercept.
At last the night's mysterious hours were sped
And day returned; but all was silent now,
And with the dawn the ghostly form had fled.
The faithful came before their God to bow,
The canons to the altar reverently.
There had been placed above it, none knew how,
A crucifix whose like none e'er did see;
Thus, only thus had God His strength put by,
Thus had He looked upon the blood-stained tree.
To Him whose suffering brought salvation nigh
Came sinners for release, a contrite band--
And "Christ have mercy!" was the general cry.
It seems not like the work of mortal hand hand--
Who can have set the godlike image there?
Who in the dead of night such offering planned?
It is the master's, who with anxious care
Has waited, from the public gaze withdrawn,
To show the utmost that his art can dare.
What shall we bring him for his ease foregone
And brain o'ertasked? Gold is but sorry meed--
His head a crown of laurel shall put on!--
So soon a great procession was decreed
Of priests and laymen; marching in the van
Went one who bore the recompense agreed.
They came where dwelt the venerated man--
And found an open door, an empty house;
They called his name, and naught but echoes ran.
The drums and cymbals all the neighbors rouse
And trumpets shrill their joy; but none appears
To see the grateful people pay their vows.
He is not there, the grave assemblage hears;
A neighbor, waking early, like a ghost
Saw him steal forth, a prey to nameless fears.
From room to room they went--their pains were lost;
In all the desolate chambers there was none
That answered them, or came to play the host.
They called aloud, let in the cheerful sun
Through opened windows--in their anxious round
Into the workshop entrance last they won * * *,
Ah, speak not of the horror there they found!
III
They have brought a captive home, and raging told
That he is stained with foulest blasphemy,
Mocks their false prophet with his insults bold.
It is the pilgrim we were used to see
For penance roaming 'neath our palm-trees' shade,
Till at the Holy Grave he might be free.
Will he, when comes the hangman, unafraid
A Christian's courage show in face of wrong?
God strengthen him on whom he cries for aid!
Ah yes--though life is sweet, his will is strong,
His mind made up; he yields him to their hands,
Content to shed his blood in torment long.
Nay, look not yonder, where the savage bands
And merciless prepare a hideous deed--
Perchance a like dread fate before us stands!
He comes, a victim led * * * yet will he bleed?
I see a wondrous radiance in his face,
As though unlooked-for safety were decreed!
Can he have bought it * * *? No! they stride apace
Toward the blood-stained spot--it is to be.
The martyr's palm his confident brow shall grace.
"Weep not! No tears of pity flowed from me
When to the cross the tender youth I bound--
My heart of stone ignored his misery."
So, hounded by remorse, the sinner found
The path of expiation, firmly trod,
Cain's brand upon him, all the dreadful round.
"Thou who didst die for me, all-pitying God,
Wilt Thou vouchsafe my tortures now an end?
I have not asked deliverance from Thy rod,
Nor hoped Thou shouldst to me Thy mercy lend.
'Tis life, not death, that is so hard to bear * * *
Into Thy hands my spirit I commend!"
So when the ruffian captors seized him there
And bound him to the cross, he calmly smiled;
'Twas they that watched whose brows were lined with care.
And as his limbs were torn with anguish wild,
And he was lifted 'mid the throng on high,
White peace came down upon his soul defiled.
In passionate prayer the faithful watched him die
That stood beneath the cross; his lips were still--
His suffering was one long atoning cry.
The day passed, and the night; with dauntless will
He yet found strength his torment dire to face.
The third day's sun sank down behind the hill;
And as the glory of its parting rays
He strove with glazing eye once more to see,
With his last breath he cried in joyful praise
"My God, my God, Thou hast not forsaken me!"
* * * * *
THE OLD SINGER[42] (1833)
Once a strange old man went singing,
Words of scornful admonition
To the streets and markets bringing:
"In the wilds a voice am I!
Slowly, slowly seek your mission;
Naught in haste, or rash endeavor--
From the work yet ceasing never
Slow and sure the hour draws nigh!
Time's great branches cease from shaking;
Blind are ye, devoid of reason,
If its fruit ye would be taking
When its blossoms have but burst.
Let it ripen to its season,
Wind within its branches bluster--
Of itself the fruits 'twill muster
For whose juices ripe ye thirst."
Wild, excited crowds are scorning
In their guise the gray old singer,
Thus reward him for his warning,
Ape his songs in mockery:
"Shall we let the fellow linger
To disgrace us? Stone him, beat him,
With the scorn he merits treat him--
Let the world his folly see!"
So the strange old man went singing,
To the halls of royal splendor
Scornful admonition bringing:
"In the wilds a voice am I!
Doubt not, dream not of surrender:
Forward, forward, never ceasing,
Strength in spite of all increasing--
Slow and sure the hour draws nigh!
With the stream, before the breezes
Wouldst thou show thy strength, then teach it
Both to conquer as it pleases--
Both are weaker than the grave.
Choose thy port, and steer to reach it!
Threatening rocks? The rudder's master;
Turning back is sure disaster,
And its end beneath the wave."
One was seen to blench in terror,
Flushing first, then sudden paling:
"Who gave entrance--whose the error
Let this madman pass along?
All things show his wits are failing--
Shall he daze our people's senses?
Prison him with sure defenses,
Silence hold his silly song!"
But the strange old man went singing
Where within the tower they bound him--
Calm and clear his answer ringing:
"In the wilds a voice am I!
Though the people's hate surround him,
Must the prophet still endeavor,
From his mission ceasing never--
Slow and sure the hour draws nigh!"
* * * * *
THE OLD WASHERWOMAN[43] (1833)
Among yon lines her hands have laden,
A laundress with white hair appears,
Alert as many a youthful maiden,
Spite of her five-and-seventy years.
Bravely she won those white hairs, still
Eating the bread hard toil obtain'd her,
And laboring truly to fulfil
The duties to which God ordain'd her.
Once she was young and full of gladness;
She loved and hoped, was woo'd and won;
Then came the matron's cares, the sadness
No loving heart on earth may shun.
Three babes she bore her mate; she pray'd
Beside his sick-bed; he was taken;
She saw him in the churchyard laid,
Yet kept her faith and hope unshaken.
The task her little ones of feeding
She met unfaltering from that hour;
She taught them thrift and honest breeding,
Her virtues were their worldly dower.
To seek employment, one by one,
Forth with her blessing they departed,
And she was in the world alone,
Alone and old, but still high-hearted.
With frugal forethought, self-denying,
She gather'd coin and flax she bought,
And many a night her spindle plying,
Good store of fine-spun thread she wrought.
The thread was fashion'd in the loom;
She brought it home, and calmly seated
To work, with not a thought of gloom,
Her decent grave-clothes she completed.
She looks on them with fond elation,
They are her wealth, her treasure rare,
Her age's pride and consolation,
Hoarded with all a miser's care.
She dons the sark each Sabbath day,
To hear the Word that faileth never;
Well-pleased she lays it then away,
Till she shall sleep in it forever.
Would that my spirit witness bore me
That, like this woman, I had done
The work my Master put before me,
Duly from morn till set of sun.
Would that life's cup had been by me
Quaff'd in such wise and happy measure,
And that I too might finally
Look on my shroud with such meek pleasure.
THE WONDERFUL HISTORY OF PETER SCHLEMIHL (1814)
By ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE
CHAPTER I
After a fortunate, but for me very troublesome voyage, we finally
reached the port. The instant that I touched land in the boat, I
loaded myself with my few effects, and passing through the swarming
people, I entered the first, and most modest house, before which I saw
a sign hang. I requested a room; the boots measured me with a look,
and conducted me into the garret. I caused fresh water to be brought,
and made him exactly describe to me where I should find Mr. Thomas
John. He replied to my inquiry--"Before the north gate; the first
country-house on the right hand; a large new house of red and white
marble, with many columns."
"Good!" It was still early in the day. I opened at once my bundle;
took thence my new black cloth coat; clad myself cleanly in my best
apparel; put my letter of introduction into my pocket, and
immediately set out on the way to the man who was to promote my modest
expectations.
When I had ascended the long North Street, and reached the gate, I
soon saw the pillars glimmer through the foliage. "Here it is, then,"
thought I. I wiped the dust from my shoes with my pocket-handkerchief,
put my neckcloth in order, and in God's name rung the bell. The door
flew open. In the hall I had an examination to undergo; the porter,
however, permitted me to be announced, and I had the honor to be
called into the park, where Mr. John was walking with a select
party. I recognized the man at once by the lustre of his corpulent
self-complacency. He received me very well--as a rich man receives a
poor devil--even turned toward me, without turning from the rest of
the company, and took the offered letter from my hand. "So, so, from
my brother! I have heard nothing from him for a long time. But he is
well? There," continued he, addressing the company, without waiting
for an answer, and pointing with the letter to a hill, "there I am
going to erect the new building." He broke the seal without breaking
off the conversation, which turned upon riches.
"He that is not master of a million, at least," he observed,
"is--pardon me the word--a wretch!"
"O! how true!" I exclaimed with a rush of overflowing feeling.
That pleased him. He smiled at me, and said--"Stay here, my good
friend; in a while I shall perhaps have time to tell you what I think
about this." He pointed to the letter, which he then thrust into his
pocket, and turned again to the company. He offered his arm to a young
lady; the other gentlemen addressed themselves to other fair
ones; each found what suited him; and all proceeded toward the
rose-blossomed mound.
I slid into the rear, without troubling any one, for no one troubled
himself any further about me. The company was excessively lively;
there were dalliance and playfulness; trifles were sometimes discussed
with an important tone, but oftener important matters with levity;
and especially pleasantly flew the wit over absent friends and their
circumstances. I was too strange to understand much of all this; too
anxious and introverted to take an interest in such riddles.
We had reached the rosary. The lovely Fanny, the belle of the day,
as it appeared, would, out of obstinacy, herself break off a blooming
bough. She wounded herself on a thorn, and as if from the dark roses,
flowed the purple on her tender hand. This circumstance put the whole
party into a flutter. English plaster was sought for. A still,
thin, lanky, longish, oldish man, who stood near, and whom I had
not hitherto remarked, put his hand instantly into the close-lying
breast-pocket of his old French gray taffetty coat; produced thence
a little pocket-book; opened it; and presented to the lady, with a
profound obeisance, the required article. She took it without noticing
the giver, and without thanks; the wound was bound up; and we went
forward over the hill, from whose back the company could enjoy the
wide prospect over the green labyrinth of the park to the boundless
ocean.
The view was in reality vast and splendid. A light point appeared
on the horizon between the dark flood and the blue of the heaven.
"A telescope here!" cried John; and already, before the servants who
appeared at the call were in motion, the gray man, modestly bowing,
had thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and drawn thence a beautiful
Dollond and handed it to John. Bringing it immediately to his eye,
the latter informed the company that it was the ship which went out
yesterday, and was detained in view of port by contrary winds. The
telescope passed from hand to hand, but not again into that of its
owner. I, however, gazed in wonder at the man, and could not conceive
how the great machine had come out of the narrow pocket; but this
seemed to have struck no one else, and nobody troubled himself any
farther about the gray man than about myself.
Refreshments were handed round; the choicest fruits of every zone, in
the costliest vessels. Mr. John did the honors with an easy grace, and
a second time addressed a word to me. "Help yourself; you have not had
the like at sea." I bowed, but he saw it not; he was already speaking
with some one else.
The company would fain have reclined upon the sward on the slope of
the hill, opposite to the outstretched landscape, had they not feared
the dampness of the earth. "It were divine," observed one of the
party, "had we but a Turkey carpet to spread here." The wish was
scarcely expressed when the man in the gray coat had his hand in
his pocket, and was busied in drawing thence, with a modest and even
humble deportment, a rich Turkey carpet interwoven with gold. The
servants received it as a matter of course, and opened it on the
required spot. The company, without ceremony, took their places upon
it; for myself, I looked again in amazement on the man, at the pocket,
at the carpet, which measured above twenty paces long and ten
in breadth, and rubbed my eyes, not knowing what to think of it,
especially as nobody saw anything extraordinary in it.
I would fain have had some explanation regarding the man, and have
asked who he was, but I knew not to whom to address myself, for I
was almost more afraid of the gentlemen's servants than of the served
gentlemen. At length I took courage, and stepped up to a young man who
appeared to me to be of less consideration than the rest, and who had
often stood alone. I begged him softly to tell me who the agreeable
man in the gray coat there was.
"He there, who looks like an end of thread that has escaped out of a
tailor's needle?"
"Yes, he who stands alone."
"I don't know him," he replied, and, as it seemed, in order to avoid
a longer conversation with me he turned away and spoke of indifferent
matters to another.
The sun began now to shine more powerfully, and to inconvenience the
ladies. The lovely Fanny addressed carelessly to the gray man, whom,
as far as I am aware, no one had yet spoken to, the trifling question,
"Whether he had not, perchance, also a tent by him?" He answered her
by an obeisance most profound, as if an unmerited honor were done
him, and had already his hand in his pocket, out of which I saw come
canvas, poles, cordage, iron-work--in short, everything which belongs
to the most splendid pleasure-tent. The young gentlemen helped to
expand it, and it covered the whole extent of the carpet, and nobody
found anything remarkable in it.
I had already become uneasy, nay, horrified at heart, but how
completely so, as, at the very next wish expressed, I saw him yet pull
out of his pocket three roadsters--I tell thee, three beautiful great
black horses, with saddle and caparison. Bethink thee! for God's
sake!--three saddled horses, still out of the same pocket from which
already a pocket-book, a telescope, an embroidered carpet, twenty
paces long and ten broad, a pleasure-tent of equal dimensions, and all
the requisite poles and irons, had come forth! If I did not protest to
thee that I saw it myself with my own eyes, thou couldst not possibly
believe it.
Embarrassed and obsequious as the man himself appeared to be, little
as was the attention which had been bestowed upon him, yet to me his
grisly aspect, from which I could not turn my eyes, became so fearful
that I could bear it no longer.
I resolved to steal away from the company, which from the
insignificant part I played in it seemed to me an easy affair. I
proposed to myself to return to the city, to try my luck again on the
morrow with Mr. John, and if I could muster the necessary courage,
to question him about the singular gray man. Had I only had the good
fortune to escape so well!
I had already actually succeeded in stealing through the rosary, and,
in descending the hill, found myself on a piece of lawn, when, fearing
to be encountered in crossing the grass out of the path, I cast an
inquiring glance round me. What was my terror to behold the man in the
gray coat behind me, and making toward me! In the next moment he took
off his hat before me, and bowed so low as no one had ever yet done to
me. There was no doubt but that he wished to address me, and, without
being rude, I could not prevent it. I also took off my hat; bowed
also; and stood there in the sun with bare head as if rooted to the
ground. I stared at him full of terror, and was like a bird which a
serpent has fascinated. He himself appeared very much embarrassed.
He raised not his eyes; again bowed repeatedly; drew nearer, and
addressed me with a soft, tremulous voice, almost in a tone of
supplication.
"May I hope, sir, that you will pardon my boldness in venturing in so
unusual a manner to approach you, but I would ask a favor. Permit me
most condescendingly----"
"But in God's name!" exclaimed I in my trepidation, "what can I do for
a man who--" we both started, and, as I believe, reddened.
After a moment's silence, he again resumed: "During the short time
that I had the happiness to find myself near you, I have, sir,
many times--allow me to say it to you--really contemplated with
inexpressible admiration, the beautiful, beautiful, shadow which, as
it were, with a certain noble disdain, and without yourself remarking
it, you cast from you in the sunshine. The noble shadow at your feet
there. Pardon me the bold supposition, but possibly you might not be
indisposed to make this shadow over to me."
He was silent, and a mill-wheel seemed to whirl round in my head. What
was I to make of this singular proposition to sell my own shadow?
He must be mad, thought I, and with an altered tone which was more
assimilated to that of his own humility, I answered thus:
"Ha! ha! good friend, have not you then enough of your own shadow? I
take this for a business of a very singular sort--"
He hastily interrupted me--"I have many things in my pocket which,
sir, might not appear worthless to you, and for this inestimable
shadow I hold the very highest price too small."
It struck cold through me again as I was reminded of the pocket.
I knew not how I could have called him good friend. I resumed the
conversation, and sought, if possible, to set all right again by
excessive politeness.
"But, sir, pardon your most humble servant; I do not understand your
meaning. How indeed could my shadow"--he interrupted me--
"I beg your permission only here on the spot to be allowed to take up
this noble shadow and put it in my pocket; how I shall do that, be my
care. On the other hand, as a testimony of my grateful acknowledgment
to you, I give you the choice of all the treasures which I carry in my
pocket--the genuine Spring-root, the Mandrake-root, the Change-penny,
the Rob-dollar, the Napkin of Roland's Page, a Mandrake-man, at your
own price. But these probably don't interest you--rather Fortunatus'
Wishing-cap newly and stoutly repaired, and a lucky-bag such as he
had!"
"The Luck-purse of Fortunatus!" I exclaimed, interrupting him; and
great as my anxiety was, with that one word he had taken my whole mind
captive. A dizziness seized me, and double ducats seemed to glitter
before my eyes.
"Honored Sir, will you do me the favor to view, and to make trial
of this purse?" He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a
tolerably large, well-sewed purse of stout Corduan leather, with two
strong strings, and handed it to me. I plunged my hand into it, and
drew out ten gold pieces, and again ten, and again ten, and again ten.
I extended him eagerly my hand "Agreed! the business is done; for the
purse you have my shadow!"
He closed with me; kneeled instantly down before me, and I beheld him,
with an admirable dexterity, gently loosen my shadow from top to toe
from the grass, lift it up, roll it together, fold it, and, finally,
pocket it. He arose, made me another obeisance, and retreated toward
the rosary. I fancied that I heard him there softly laughing to
himself; but I held the purse fast by the strings; all round me lay
the clear sunshine, and within me was yet no power of reflection.
CHAPTER II
At length I came to myself, and hastened to quit the place where I had
nothing more to expect. In the first place I filled my pockets with
gold; then I secured the strings of the purse fast round my neck, and
concealed the purse itself in my bosom. I passed unobserved out of the
park, reached the highway and took the road to the city. As, sunk
in thought, I approached the gate, I heard a cry behind me--"Young
gentleman! eh! young gentleman! hear you!" I looked round, an old
woman called after me. "Do take care, sir, you have lost your shadow!"
"Thank you, good mother!" I threw her a gold piece for her well-meant
information, and stopped under the trees.
At the city gate I was compelled to hear again from the
sentinel--"Where has the gentleman left his shadow?" And immediately
again from some women--"Jesus Maria! the poor fellow has no shadow!"
That began to irritate me, and I became especially careful not to walk
in the sun. This could not, however, be accomplished everywhere--for
instance, over the broad street which I next must cross, actually, as
mischief would have it, at the very moment that the boys came out
of school. A cursed hunch-backed rogue, I see him yet, spied out
instantly that I had no shadow. He proclaimed the fact with a loud
outcry to the whole assembled literary street youth of the suburb,
who began forthwith to criticise me, and to pelt me with mud. "Decent
people are accustomed to take their shadows with them, when they go
into the sunshine." To defend myself from them I threw whole handfuls
of gold amongst them and sprang into a hackney-coach, which some
compassionate soul procured for me.
As soon as I found myself alone in the rolling carriage I began to
weep bitterly. The presentiment must already have arisen in me that,
far as gold on earth transcends in estimation merit and virtue,
so much higher than gold itself is the shadow valued; and as I had
earlier sacrificed wealth to conscience, I had now thrown away the
shadow for mere gold. What in the world could and would become of me!
I was still greatly discomposed as the carriage stopped before my
old inn. I was horrified at the bare idea of entering that wretched
cock-loft. I ordered my things to be brought down; received my
miserable bundle with contempt, threw down some gold pieces, and
ordered the coachman to drive to the most fashionable hotel. The house
faced the north, and I had not the sun to fear. I dismissed the driver
with gold; caused the best front rooms to be assigned me, and shut
myself up in them as quickly as I could!
What thinkest thou I now began? Oh, my dear Chamisso, to confess it
even to thee makes me blush. I drew the unlucky purse from my bosom,
and with a kind of rage which, like a rushing conflagration, grew in
me with self-increasing growth, I extracted gold, and gold, and gold,
and ever more gold, and strewed it on the floor, and strode amongst
it, and made it ring again, and, feeding my poor heart on the splendor
and the sound, flung continually more metal to metal, till in my
weariness I sank down on the rich heap, and, rioting thereon, rolled
and reveled upon it. So passed the day, the evening. I opened not my
door; the night found me lying on my gold, and then sleep overcame me.
I dreamed of thee. I seemed to stand behind the glass-door of thy
little room, and to see thee sitting then at thy work-table, between
a skeleton and a bundle of dried plants. Before thee lay open Haller,
Humboldt, and Linnaeus; on thy sofa a volume of Goethe and "The Magic
Ring." I regarded thee long, and everything in thy room, and then thee
again. Thou didst not move, thou drewest no breath--thou wert dead!
I awoke. It appeared still to be very early. My watch stood. I was
sore all over; thirsty and hungry too; I had taken nothing since the
morning before. I pushed from me with loathing and indignation the
gold on which I had before sated my foolish heart. In my vexation
I knew not what I should do with it. It must not lie there. I tried
whether the purse would swallow it again--but no! None of my windows
opened upon the sea. I found myself compelled laboriously to drag it
to a great cupboard which stood in a cabinet, and there to pile it. I
left only some handfuls of it lying. When I had finished the work, I
threw myself exhausted into an easy chair, and waited for the stirring
of the people in the house. As soon as possible I ordered food to be
brought, and the landlord to come to me.
I fixed in consultation with this man the future arrangements of
my house. He recommended for the services about my person a certain
Bendel, whose honest and intelligent physiognomy immediately
captivated me. He it was whose attachment has since accompanied me
consolingly through the wretchedness of life, and has helped me
to support my gloomy lot. I spent the whole day in my room among
masterless servants, shoemakers, tailors, and tradespeople. I fitted
myself out, and purchased besides a great many jewels and valuables
for the sake of getting rid of some of the vast heap of hoarded-up
gold; but it seemed to me as if it were impossible to diminish it.
In the meantime I brooded over my situation in the most agonizing
doubts. I dared not venture a step out of my doors, and at evening I
caused forty waxlights to be lit in my room before I issued from
the shade. I thought with horror on the terrible scene with the
schoolboys, yet I resolved, much courage as it demanded, once more to
make a trial of public opinion. The nights were then moonlight. Late
in the evening I threw on a wide cloak, pressed my hat over my eyes,
and stole, trembling like a criminal, out of the house. I stepped
first out of the shade in whose protection I had arrived so far, in
a remote square, into the full moonlight, determined to learn my fate
out of the mouths of the passers-by.
Spare me, dear friend, the painful repetition of all that I had to
endure. The women often testified the deepest compassion with which
I inspired them, declarations which no less transpierced me than the
mockery of the youth and the proud contempt of the men, especially
of those fat, well fed fellows, who themselves cast a broad shadow.
A lovely and sweet girl, who, as it seemed, accompanied her parents,
while these discreetly only looked before their feet, turned by chance
her flashing eyes upon me. She was obviously terrified; she observed
my want of a shadow, let fall her veil over her beautiful countenance,
and dropping her head, passed in silence.
I could bear it no longer. Briny streams started from my eyes, and,
cut to the heart, I staggered back into the shade. I was obliged to
support myself against the houses to steady my steps and wearily and
late reached my dwelling.
I spent a sleepless night. The next morning it was my first care to
have the man in the gray coat everywhere sought after. Possibly I
might succeed in finding him again, and how joyful if he repented of
the foolish bargain as heartily as I did! I ordered Bendel to me, for
he appeared to possess address and tact; I described to him exactly
the man in whose possession lay a treasure without which my life was
only a misery. I told him the time, the place in which I had seen him;
I described to him all who had been present, and added, moreover, this
token: he should particularly inquire after a Dollond's telescope;
after a gold interwoven Turkish carpet; after a splendid
pleasure-tent; and, finally, after the black chargers, whose story,
we knew not how, was connected with that of the mysterious man, who
seemed of no consideration amongst them, and whose appearance had
destroyed the quiet and happiness of my life.
When I had done speaking I fetched out gold, such a load that I was
scarcely able to carry it, and added thereto precious stones and
jewels of a far greater value. "Bendel," said I, "these level many
ways, and make easy many things which appeared quite impossible; don't
be stingy with it, as I am not, but go and rejoice thy master with the
intelligence on which his only hope depends."
He went. He returned late and sorrowful. None of the people of Mr.
John, none of his guests, and he had spoken with all, were able, in
the remotest degree, to recollect the man in the gray coat. The new
telescope was there, and no one knew whence it had come; the carpet,
the tent were still there spread and pitched on the selfsame hill;
the servants boasted of the affluence of their master, and no one
knew whence these new valuables had come to him. He himself took his
pleasure in them, and did not trouble himself because he did not know
whence he had them. The young gentlemen had the horses, which they had
ridden, in their stables, and they praised the liberality of Mr. John
who on that day made them a present of them. Thus much was clear from
the circumstantial relation of Bendel, whose active zeal and able
proceeding, although with such fruitless result, received from me
their merited commendation. I gloomily motioned him to leave me alone.
"I have," began he again, "given my master an account of the matter
which was most important to him. I have yet a message to deliver which
a person gave me whom I met at the door as I went out on the business
in which I have been so unfortunate. The very words of the man were
these: 'Tell Mr. Peter Schlemihl he will not see me here again, as I
am going over sea, and a favorable wind calls me at this moment to
the harbor. But in a year and a day I will have the honor to seek
him myself, and then to propose to him another and probably to him
agreeable transaction. Present my most humble compliments to him,
and assure him of my thanks.' I asked him who he was, but he replied
that your honor knew him already."
"What was the man's appearance?" cried I, filled with foreboding, and
Bendel sketched me the man in the gray coat, trait by trait, word for
word, as he had accurately described in his former relation the man
after whom he had inquired.
"Unhappy one!" I exclaimed, wringing my hands--"that was the very
man!" and there fell, as it were, scales from his eyes.
"Yes! it was he, it was, positively!" cried he in horror, "and
I, blind and imbecile wretch, have not recognized him, have not
recognized him, and have betrayed my master!"
He broke out into violent weeping; heaped the bitterest reproaches
on himself, and the despair in which he was inspired even me with
compassion. I spoke comfort to him, assured him repeatedly that I
entertained not the slightest doubt of his fidelity, and sent him
instantly to the port, if possible to follow the traces of this
singular man. But in the morning a great number of ships which the
contrary winds had detained in the harbor, had run out, bound to
different climes and different shores, and the gray man had vanished
as tracelessly as a dream.
CHAPTER III
Of what avail are wings to him who is fast bound in iron fetters? He
is compelled only the more fearfully to despair. I lay, like Faffner
by his treasure, far from every consolation, starving in the midst
of my gold. But my heart was not in it; on the contrary, I cursed it,
because I saw myself through it cut off from all life. Brooding over
my gloomy secret alone, I trembled before the meanest of my servants,
whom at the same time I was forced to envy, for he had a shadow; he
might show himself in the sun. I wore away days and nights in solitary
sorrow in my chamber, and anguish gnawed at my heart.
There was another who pined away before my eyes; my faithful Bendel
never ceased to torture himself with silent reproaches, that he
had betrayed the trust reposed in him by his master, and had not
recognized him after whom he was dispatched, and with whom he must
believe that my sorrowful fate was intimately interwoven. I could not
lay the fault to his charge; I recognized in the event the mysterious
nature of the Unknown.
That I might leave nothing untried, I one time sent Bendel with a
valuable brilliant ring to the most celebrated painter of the city,
and begged that he would pay me a visit. He came. I ordered my people
to retire, closed the door, seated myself by the man, and, after I had
praised his art, I came with a heavy heart to the business, causing
him before that to promise the strictest secrecy.
"Mr. Professor," said I, "could not you, think you, paint a false
shadow for one who, by the most unlucky chance in the world, has
become deprived of his own?"
"You mean a personal shadow?"
"That is precisely my meaning"--
"But," continued he, "through what awkwardness, through what
negligence, could he then lose his proper shadow?"
"How it happened," replied I, "is now of very little consequence, but
thus far I may say," added I, lying shamelessly to him; "in Russia,
whither he made a journey last winter, in an extraordinary cold his
shadow froze so fast to the ground that he could by no means loose it
again."
"The false shadow that I could paint him," replied the professor,
"would only be such a one as by the slightest movement he might lose
again, especially a person, who, as appears by your relation, has so
little adhesion to his own native shadow. He who has no shadow, let
him keep out of the sunshine--that is the safest and most sensible
thing for him." He arose and withdrew, casting at me a trans-piercing
glance which mine could not support. I sunk back in my seat, and
covered my face with my hands.
Thus Bendel found me, as he at length entered. He saw the grief of his
master, and was desirous silently and reverently to withdraw. I looked
up, I succumbed under the burden of my trouble; I must communicate it.
"Bendel!" cried I, "Bendel, thou only one who seest my affliction and
respectest it, seekest not to pry into it, but appearest silently and
kindly to sympathize, come to me, Bendel, and be the nearest to my
heart; I have not locked from thee the treasure of my gold, neither
will I lock from thee the treasure of my grief. Bendel, forsake me
not! Bendel, thou beholdest me rich, liberal, kind. Thou imaginest
that the world ought to honor me, and thou seest me fly the world, and
hide myself from it. Bendel, the world has passed judgment, and cast
me from it, and perhaps thou too wilt turn from me when thou knowest
my fearful secret. Bendel, I am rich, liberal, kind, but--O God!--I
have no shadow!"
"No shadow!" cried the good youth with horror, and the bright
tears gushed from his eyes. "Woe is me, that I was born to serve a
shadowless master!" He was silent, and I held my face buried in my
hands.
"Bendel," added I, at length, tremblingly--"now hast thou my
confidence, and now canst thou betray it--go forth and testify against
me?" He appeared to be in a heavy conflict with himself; at length, he
flung himself before me and seized my hand, which he bathed with his
tears.
"No!" exclaimed he, "think the world as it will, I cannot, and will
not, on account of a shadow, abandon my kind master; I will act
justly, and not with policy. I will continue with you, lend you my
shadow, help you when I can, and when I cannot, weep with you." I fell
on his neck, astonished at such unusual sentiment, for I was convinced
that he did it not for gold.
From that time my fate and my mode of life were in some degree
changed. It is indescribable how providently Bendel continued to
conceal my defect. He was everywhere before me and with me; foreseeing
everything, hitting on contrivances, and, where unforeseen danger
threatened, covering me quickly with his shadow, since he was taller
and bulkier than I. Thus I ventured myself again among men, and began
to play a part in the world. I was obliged, it is true, to assume many
peculiarities and humors, but such become the rich, and, so long
as the truth continued to be concealed, I enjoyed all the honor and
respect which were paid to my wealth. I looked more calmly forward to
the promised visit of the mysterious unknown, at the end of the year
and the day.
I felt, indeed, that I must not remain long in a place where I had
once been seen without a shadow, and where I might easily be betrayed.
Perhaps I yet thought too much of the manner in which I had introduced
myself to Thomas John, and it was a mortifying recollection. I would
therefore here merely make an experiment, to present myself with more
ease and self-reliance elsewhere, but that now occurred which held me
a long time riveted to my vanity, for there it is in the man that the
anchor bites the firmest ground.
Even the lovely Fanny, whom I in this place again encountered, honored
me with some notice without recollecting ever to have seen me before;
for I now had wit and sense. As I spoke, people listened, and I could
not, for the life of me, comprehend myself how I had arrived at the
art of maintaining and engrossing so easily the conversation. The
impression which I perceived that I had made on the fair one, made
of me just what she desired--a fool; and I thenceforward followed her
through shade and twilight wherever I could. I was only so far vain
that I wished to make her vain of myself, and found it impossible,
even with the very best intentions, to force the intoxication from my
head to my heart.
But why repeat to thee the absolutely every-day story at length? Thou
thyself hast often related it to me of other honorable people. To the
old, well-known play in which I good-naturedly undertook a worn-out
part, there came in truth to her and me, and everybody, unexpectedly a
most peculiarly thought-out catastrophe.
As, according to my wont, I had assembled on a beautiful evening
a party in a garden, I wandered with the lady, arm in arm, at some
distance from the other guests, and exerted myself to strike out
pretty speeches for her. She cast her eyes down modestly, and returned
gently the pressure of my hand, when suddenly the moon broke through
the clouds behind us, and--she saw only her own shadow thrown forward
before her! She started and glanced wildly at me, then again on the
earth, seeking my shadow with her eyes, and what passed within her
painted itself so singularly on her countenance that I should have
burst into a loud laugh if it had not itself run ice-cold over my
back.
I let her fall from my arms in a swoon, shot like an arrow through the
terrified guests, reached the door, flung myself into the first chaise
which I saw on the stand, and drove back to the city, where this time,
to my cost, I had left the circumspect Bendel. He was terrified as
he saw me; one word revealed to him all. Post horses were immediately
fetched. I took only one of my people with me, an arrant knave, called
Rascal, who had contrived to make himself necessary to me by his
cleverness and who could suspect nothing of today's occurrence. That
night I left upward of thirty miles behind me. Bendel remained behind
me to discharge my establishment, to pay money, and to bring me what
I most required. When he overtook me next day, I threw myself into his
arms, and swore to him never again to run into the like folly, but in
future to be more cautious. We continued our journey without pause,
over the frontiers and the mountains, and it was not till we began to
descend and had placed those lofty bulwarks between us and our former
unlucky abode, that I allowed myself to be persuaded to rest from
the fatigues I had undergone, in a neighboring and little frequented
Bathing-place.
CHAPTER IV
I must pass in my relation hastily over a time in which how gladly
would I linger, could I but conjure up the living spirit of it with
the recollection. But the color which vivified it, and alone can
vivify it again, is extinguished in me; and when I seek in my bosom
what then so mightily animated it, the grief and the joy, the innocent
illusion--then do I vainly smite a rock in which no living spring now
dwells, and the god is departed from me. How changed does this past
time now appear to me! I would act in the watering place an heroic
character, ill studied, and myself a novice on the boards, and my gaze
was lured from my part by a pair of blue eyes. The parents, deluded by
the play, offer everything only to make the business quickly secure;
and the poor farce closes in mockery. And that is all, all! That
presents itself now to me so absurd and commonplace, and yet it is
terrible, that that can thus appear to me which then so richly, so
luxuriantly, swelled my bosom. Mina! as I wept at losing thee, so weep
I still to have lost thee also in myself. Am I then become so old? Oh,
melancholy reason! Oh, but for one pulsation of that time! one moment
of that illusion! But no! alone on the high waste sea of thy bitter
flood! and long out of the last cup of champagne the elfin has
vanished!
I had sent forward Bendel with some purses of gold to procure for
me in the little town a dwelling adapted to my needs. He had
there scattered about much money, and expressed himself somewhat
indefinitely respecting the distinguished stranger whom he served,
for I would not be named, and that filled the good people with
extraordinary fancies. As soon as my house was ready Bendel returned
to conduct me thither. We set out.
About three miles from the place, on a sunny plain, our progress was
obstructed by a gay festal throng. The carriage stopped. Music, sound
of bells, discharge of cannon, were heard; a loud _vivat_! rent the
air; before the door of the carriage appeared, clad in white, a troop
of damsels of extraordinary beauty, but who were eclipsed by one in
particular, as the stars of night by the sun. She stepped forth
from the midst of her sisters; the tall and delicate figure kneeled
blushing before me, and presented to me on a silken cushion a garland
woven of laurel, olive branches, and roses, while she uttered some
words about majesty, veneration and love, which I did not understand,
but whose bewitching silver tone intoxicated my ear and heart. It
seemed as if the heavenly apparition had some time previously passed
before me. The chorus struck in, and sung the praises of a good king
and the happiness of his people.
And this scene, my dear friend, in the face of the sun! She kneeled
still only two paces from me, and I, without a shadow, could not
spring over the gulf, could not also fall on the knee before the
angel! Oh! what would I then have given for a shadow! I was compelled
to hide my shame, my anguish, my despair, deep in the bottom of my
carriage. At length Bendel recollected himself on my behalf. He leaped
out of the carriage on the other side. I called him back, and gave
him out of my jewel-case, which lay at hand, a splendid diamond crown,
which had been made to adorn the brows of the lovely Fanny! He stepped
forward and spoke in the name of his master, who could not and would
not receive such tokens of homage; there must be some mistake; but the
people of the city should be thanked for their good-will. As he said
this, he took up the proffered wreath, and laid the brilliant coronet
in its place. He then respectfully extended his hand to the lovely
maiden, that she might arise, and dismissed, with a sign, clergy,
magistrates, and all the deputations. No one else was allowed to
approach. He ordered the throng to divide and make way for the horses,
sprang again into the carriage, and on we went at full gallop,
through a festive archway of foliage and flowers toward the city. The
discharges of cannon continued. The carriage stopped before my house.
I sprang hastily in at the door, dividing the crowd which the desire
to see me had collected. The mob hurrahed under my window, and I let
double ducats rain out of it. In the evening the city was voluntarily
illuminated.
And yet I did not at all know what all this could mean, and who I was
supposed to be. I sent out Rascal to make inquiry. He brought word to
this effect: That the people had received reliable intelligence that
the good king of Prussia traveled through the country under the name
of a count; that my adjutant had been recognized, thus betraying
himself and me; and, finally, how great the joy was as they became
certain that they really had me in the place. They now, 'tis true,
saw clearly that I evidently desired to maintain the strictest
_incognito_, and how very wrong it had been to attempt so
importunately to lift the veil. But I had resented it so graciously,
so kindly--I should certainly pardon their good-heartedness.
The thing appeared so amusing to the rogue that he did his best, by
reproving words, to strengthen, for the present, the good folk in
their belief. He gave a very comical report of all this to me; and
as he found that it diverted me, he made a joke to me of his own
wickedness. Shall I confess it? It flattered me, even by such means,
to be taken for that honored head.
I commanded a feast to be prepared for the evening of the next day
beneath the trees which overshadowed the open space before my house,
and the whole city to be invited to it. The mysterious power of
my purse, the exertions of Bendel, and the inventiveness of Rascal
succeeded in triumphing over time itself. It is really astonishing how
richly and beautifully everything was arranged in those few hours. The
splendor and abundance which exhibited themselves, and the ingenious
lighting up, so admirably contrived that I felt myself quite secure,
left me nothing to desire. I could not but praise my servants.
The evening grew dark; the guests appeared, and were presented to me.
Nothing more was said about Majesty; I was styled with deep reverence
and obeisance, Count. What was to be done? I allowed the title to
stand, and remained from that hour Count Peter. In the midst of
festive multitudes my soul yearned alone after one. She entered
late--she was and wore the crown. She followed modestly her parents,
and seemed not to know that she was the loveliest of all. They were
presented to me as Mr. Forest-master, his lady and their daughter.
I found many agreeable and obliging things to say to the old people;
before the daughter I stood like a rebuked boy, and could not bring
out one word. I begged her, at length, with a faltering tone, to
honor this feast by assuming the office whose insignia she graced. She
entreated with blushes and a moving look to be excused; but blushing
still more than herself in her presence, I paid her as her first
subject my homage, with a most profound respect, and the hint of the
Count became to all the guests a command which every one with emulous
joy hastened to obey. Majesty, innocence, and grace presided in
alliance with beauty over a rapturous feast. Mina's happy parents
believed their child thus exalted only in honor of them. I myself was
in an indescribable intoxication. I caused all the jewels which yet
remained of those which I had formerly purchased, in order to get rid
of burthensome gold, all the pearls, all the precious stones, to
be laid in two covered dishes, and at the table, in the name of
the queen, to be distributed round to her companions and to all
the ladies. Gold, in the meantime, was incessantly strewed over the
encompassing ropes among the exulting people.
Bendel, the next morning, revealed to me in confidence that the
suspicion which he had long entertained of Rascal's honesty was now
become certainty--that he had yesterday embezzled whole purses of
gold. "Let us permit," replied I, "the poor scoundrel to enjoy
the petty plunder. I spend willingly on everybody, why not on him?
Yesterday he and all the fresh people you have brought me served me
honestly; they helped me joyfully to celebrate a joyful feast."
There was no further mention of it. Rascal remained the first of my
servants, but Bendel was my friend and my confidant. The latter was
accustomed to regard my wealth as inexhaustible, and he pried not
after its sources; entering into my humor, he assisted me rather to
discover opportunities to exercise it, and to spend my gold. Of that
unknown one, that pale sneak, he knew only this, that I could alone
through him be absolved from the curse which weighed on me; and that
I feared him, on whom my sole hope reposed. That, for the rest, I was
convinced that he could discover me anywhere; I him nowhere; and that
therefore awaiting the promised day, I abandoned every vain inquiry.
The magnificence of my feast, and my behavior at it, held at first
the credulous inhabitants of the city firmly to their preconceived
opinion. True, it was soon stated in the newspapers that the whole
story of the journey of the king of Prussia had been a mere groundless
rumor: but a king I now was, and must, spite of everything, a king
remain, and truly one of the most rich and royal who had ever existed;
only people did not rightly know what king. The world has never had
reason to complain of the scarcity of monarchs, at least in our time.
The good people who had never seen any of them pitched with equal
correctness first on one and then on another; Count Peter still
remained who he was.
At one time appeared amongst the guests at the Bath a tradesman, who
had made himself bankrupt in order to enrich himself; and who enjoyed
universal esteem, and had a broad though somewhat pale shadow. The
property which he had scraped together he resolved to lay out in
ostentation, and it even occurred to him to enter into rivalry with
me. I had recourse to my purse, and soon brought the poor devil to
such a pass that, in order to save his credit, he was obliged to
become bankrupt a second time, and hasten over the frontier. Thus
I got rid of him. In this neighborhood I made many idlers and
good-for-nothing fellows.
With all the royal splendor and expenditure by which I made all
succumb to me, I still in my own house lived very simply and retired.
I had established the strictest circumspection as a rule. No one
except Bendel, under any pretence whatever, was allowed to enter the
rooms which I inhabited. So long as the sun shone I kept myself shut
up there, and it was said "the Count is employed with his cabinet."
With this employment numerous couriers stood in connection, whom I,
for every trifle, sent out and received. I received company in the
evening only under my trees, or in my hall arranged and lighted
according to Bendel's plan. When I went out, on which occasions it
was necessary that I should be constantly watched by the Argus eyes
of Bendel, it was only to the Forester's Garden, for the sake of one
alone; for my love was the innermost heart of my life.
Oh, my good Chamisso! I will hope that thou hast not yet forgotten
what love is! I leave much unmentioned here to thee. Mina was really
an amiable, kind, good child. I had taken her whole imagination
captive. She could not, in her humility, conceive how she could
be worthy that I should alone have fixed my regard on her; and she
returned love for love with all the youthful power of an innocent
heart. She loved like a woman, offering herself wholly up;
self-forgetting; living wholly and solely for him who was her life;
regardless if she herself perished; that is to say--she really loved.
But I--oh what terrible hours--terrible and yet worthy that I should
wish them back again--have I often wept on Bendel's bosom, when,
after the first unconscious intoxication, I recollected myself, looked
sharply into myself--I, without a shadow, with knavish selfishness
destroying this angel, this pure soul which I had deceived and stolen.
Then did I resolve to reveal myself to her; then did I swear with a
most passionate oath to tear myself from her, and to fly; then did
I burst out into tears, and concert with Bendel how in the evening I
should visit her in the Forester's garden.
At other times I flattered myself with great expectations from the
rapidly approaching visit of the gray man, and wept again when I had
in vain tried to believe in it. I had calculated the day on which I
expected again to see the fearful one; for he had said in a year and a
day; and I believed his word.
The parents, good honorable old people, who loved their only child
extremely, were amazed at the connection, as it already stood, and
they knew not what to do in it. Earlier they could not have believed
that Count Peter could think only of their child; but now he really
loved her and was beloved again. The mother was probably vain enough
to believe in the probability of a union, and to seek for it; the
sound masculine understanding of the father did not give way to such
overstretched imaginations. Both were persuaded of the purity of my
love; they could do nothing more than pray for their child.
I have laid my hand on a letter from Mina of this date, which I still
retain. Yes, this is her own writing. I transcribe it for thee:
"I am a weak silly maiden, and cannot believe that my beloved, because
I love him dearly, dearly, will make the poor girl unhappy. Ah! thou
art so kind, so inexpressibly kind, but do not misunderstand me. Thou
shalt sacrifice nothing for me, desire to sacrifice nothing for me.
Oh God! I should hate myself if thou didst! No--thou hast made me
immeasurably happy; hast taught me to love thee. Away! I know my own
fate. Count Peter belongs not to me, he belongs to the world. I will
be proud when I hear--'that was he, and that was he again--and that
has he accomplished; there they have worshipped him, and there they
have deified him!' See, when I think of this, then am I angry with
thee that with a simple child thou canst forget thy high destiny.
Away! or the thought will make me miserable! I--oh! who through thee
am so happy, so blessed! Have I not woven, too, an olive branch and
a rosebud into thy life, as into the wreath which I was allowed to
present to thee? I have thee in my heart, my beloved; fear not to
leave me. I will die oh! so happy, so ineffably happy through thee!"
Thou canst imagine how the words must cut through my heart. I
explained to her that I was not what people believed me, that I was
only a rich but infinitely miserable man. That a curse rested on me,
which must be the only secret between us, since I was not yet without
hope that it should be solved. That this was the poison of my days;
that I might drag her down with me into the gulf--she who was the sole
light, the sole happiness, the sole heart of my life. Then wept she
again, because I was unhappy. Ah, she was so loving, so kind! To spare
me but one tear, she, and with what transport, would have sacrificed
herself without reserve!
She was, however, far from rightly comprehending my words; she
conceived in me some prince on whom had fallen a heavy ban, some high
and honored head, and her imagination amidst heroic pictures limned
forth her lover gloriously.
Once I said to her--"Mina, the last day in the next month may change
my fate and decide it--if not I must die, for I will not make thee
unhappy." Weeping she hid her head in my bosom. "If thy fortune
changes, let me know that thou art happy. I have no claim on thee. Art
thou wretched, bind me to thy wretchedness, that I may help thee to
bear it."
"Maiden! maiden! take it back, that quick word, that foolish word
which escaped thy lips. And knowest thou this wretchedness? Knowest
thou this curse? Knowest who thy lover--what he? Seest thou not that
I convulsively shrink together, and have a secret from thee?" She fell
sobbing to my feet, and repeated with oaths her entreaty.
I announced to the Forest-master, who entered, that it was my
intention on the first of the approaching month to solicit the hand of
his daughter. I fixed precisely this time, because in the interim many
things might occur which might influence my fortunes; but I insisted
that I was unchangeable in my love to his daughter.
The good man was quite startled as he heard such words out of the
mouth of Count Peter. He fell on my neck, and again became quite
ashamed to have thus forgotten himself. Then he began to doubt, to
weigh, and to inquire. He spoke of dowry, security, and the future of
his beloved child. I thanked him for reminding me of these things. I
told him that I desired to settle down in this neighborhood where I
seemed to be beloved, and to lead a care-free life. I begged him to
purchase the finest estates that the country had to offer, in the name
of his daughter, and to charge the cost to me. A father could, in such
matter, best serve a lover. It gave him enough to do, for everywhere
a stranger was before him, and he could only purchase for about a
million.
My thus employing him was, at the bottom, an innocent scheme to remove
him to a distance, and I had employed him similarly before; for I
must confess that he was rather wearisome. The good mother was, on the
contrary, somewhat deaf, and not, like him, jealous of the honor of
entertaining the Count.
The mother joined us. The happy people pressed me to stay longer with
them that evening--I dared not remain another minute. I saw already
the rising moon glimmer on the horizon--my time was up.
The next evening I went again to the Forester's garden. I had thrown
my cloak over my shoulders and pulled my hat over my eyes. I advanced
to Mina. As she looked up and beheld me, she gave an involuntary
start, and there stood again clear before my soul the apparition of
that terrible night when I showed myself in the moonlight without a
shadow. It was actually she! But had she also recognized me again? She
was silent and thoughtful; on my bosom lay a hundred-weight pressure.
I arose from my seat. She threw herself silently weeping on my bosom.
I went.
I now found her often in tears. It grew darker and darker in my soul;
the parents swam only in supreme felicity; the faith-day passed on sad
and sullen as a thunder-cloud. The eve of the day was come. I could
scarcely breathe. I had in precaution filled several chests with gold.
I watched the midnight hour approach--It struck.
I now sat, my eye fixed on the fingers of the clock, counting the
seconds, the minutes, like dagger-strokes. At every noise which
arose, I started up; the day broke. The leaden hours crowded one upon
another. It was noon--evening--night; as the clock fingers sped on,
hope withered; it struck eleven and nothing appeared; the last minutes
of the last hour fell, and nothing appeared. It struck the first
stroke--the last stroke of the twelfth hour, and I sank hopeless
and in boundless tears upon my bed. On the morrow I should--forever
shadowless, solicit the hand of my beloved. Toward morning an anxious
sleep pressed down my eyelids.
CHAPTER V
It was still early morning when voices, which were raised in my
ante-chamber in violent dispute, awoke me. I listened. Bendel forbade
entrance; Rascal swore high and hotly that he would receive no
commands from his equal, and insisted on forcing his way into my room.
The good Bendel warned him that such words, came they to my ear, would
turn him out of his most advantageous service. Rascal threatened to
lay hands on him if he any longer obstructed his entrance.
I had half dressed myself. I flung the door wrathfully open, and
advanced to Rascal--"What wantest thou, villain?" He stepped two
strides backward, and replied quite coolly: "To request you most
humbly, Count, for once to allow me to see your shadow--the sun shines
at this moment so beautifully in the court."
I was struck as with thunder. It was some time before I could recover
my speech. "How can a servant toward his master"--he interrupted very
calmly my speech.
"A servant may be a very honorable man, and not be willing to serve
a shadowless master--I demand my discharge." It was necessary to try
other chords. "But honest, dear Rascal, who has put the unlucky idea
into your head? How canst thou believe--?"
He proceeded in the same tone: "People will assert that you have
no shadow--and, in short, you show me your shadow, or give me my
discharge."
Bendel, pale and trembling, but more discreet than I, gave me a sign.
I sought refuge in the all-silencing gold; but that too had lost
its power. He threw it at my feet. "From a shadowless man I accept
nothing!" He turned his back upon me, and went most deliberately out
of the room with his hat upon his head, and whistling a tune. I stood
there with Bendel as one turned to stone, thoughtless, motionless,
gazing after him.
Heavily sighing and with death in my heart, I prepared myself at last
to redeem my promise, and, like a criminal before his judge, to appear
in the Forest-master's garden. I alighted in the dark arbor, which was
named after me, and where they would be sure also this time to await
me. The mother met me, care-free and joyous. Mina sat there, pale and
lovely as the first snow which often in the autumn kisses the
last flowers and then instantly dissolves into bitter water. The
Forest-master went agitatedly to and fro, a written paper in his
hand, and appeared to force down many things in himself which painted
themselves with rapidly alternating flushes and paleness on his
otherwise immovable countenance. He came up to me as I entered, and
with frequently choked words begged to speak with me alone. The path
in which he invited me to follow him, led us toward an open, sunny
part of the garden. I sank speechless on a seat, and then followed a
long silence which even the good mother dared not interrupt.
The Forest-master raged continually with unequal steps to and fro in
the arbor, and, suddenly halting before me, glanced on the paper which
he held, and demanded of me with a searching look--
"May not, Count, a certain Peter Schlemihl be not quite unknown
to you?" I was silent. "A man of superior character and singular
attainments--" He paused for an answer.
"And suppose I were the same man?"
"Who," added he vehemently--"has, by some means, lost his shadow!"
"Oh, my foreboding, my foreboding!" exclaimed Mina. "Yes, I have long
known it, he has no shadow;" and she flung herself into the arms of
her mother, who, terrified, clasped her convulsively, and upbraided
her that to her own hurt she had kept to herself such a secret. But
she, like Arethusa, was changed into a fountain of tears, which at the
sound of my voice flowed still more copiously and at my approach burst
forth in torrents.
"And you," again grimly began the Forest-master, "and you, with
unparalleled impudence, have made no scruple to deceive these and
myself, and you give out that you love her whom you brought into this
predicament. See, there, how she weeps and writhes! Oh, horrible!
horrible!"
I had to such a degree lost my composure that, talking like one
crazed, I began--"And, after all, a shadow is nothing but a shadow;
one can do very well without that, and it is not worth while to make
such a riot about it." But I felt so sharply the baselessness of what
I was saying that I stopped of myself, without his deigning me an
answer, and I then added--"What one has lost at one time may be found
again at another!"
He fiercely rebuked me "Confess to me, sir, confess to me, how became
you deprived of your shadow!"
I was compelled again to lie. "A rude fellow one day trod so heavily
on my shadow that he rent a great hole in it. I have only sent it to
be mended, for money can do much, and I was to have received it back
yesterday."
"Good, sir, very good!" replied the Forest-master. "You solicit my
daughter's hand; others do the same. I have, as her father, to care
for her. I give you three days in which you may seek for a shadow. If
you appear before me within these three days with a good, well-fitting
shadow, you shall be welcome to me; but on the fourth day--I tell you
plainly--my daughter is the wife of another."
I would yet attempt to speak a word to Mina, but she clung, sobbing
violently, only closer to her mother's breast, who silently motioned
me to withdraw. I reeled away, and the world seemed to close itself
behind me.
Escaped from Bendel's affectionate oversight, I traversed in erring
course woods and fields. The perspiration of my agony dropped from my
brow, a hollow groaning convulsed my bosom, madness raged within me.
I know not how long this had continued, when, on a sunny heath, I felt
myself plucked by the sleeve. I stood still and looked round--it was
the man in the gray coat, who seemed to have run himself quite out of
breath in pursuit of me. He immediately began:
"I had announced myself for today, but you could not wait the time.
There is nothing amiss, however, yet. You consider the matter, receive
your shadow again in exchange, which is at your service, and turn
immediately back. You shall be welcome in the Forest-master's garden;
the whole has been only a joke. Rascal, who has betrayed you, and who
seeks the hand of your bride, I will take charge of; the fellow is
ripe."
I stood there as if in a dream. "Announced for today?" I counted over
again the time--he was right. I had constantly miscalculated a day.
I sought with the right hand in my bosom for my purse; he guessed my
meaning, and stepped two paces backwards.
"No, Count, that is in too good hands, keep you that." I stared at
him with eyes of inquiring wonder, and he proceeded: "I request only a
trifle, as memento. You be so good as to set your name to this paper."
On the parchment stood the words:
"By virtue of this my signature, I make over my soul to the holder of
this, after its natural separation from the body."
I gazed with speechless amazement, alternately at the writing and the
gray unknown. Meanwhile, with a new-cut quill he had taken up a
drop of blood which flowed from a fresh thorn-scratch on my hand and
presented it to me.
"Who are you, after all?" at length I asked him.
"What does it matter?" he replied. "And is it not plainly written on
me? A poor devil, a sort of learned man and doctor, who, in return
for precious arts, receives from his friends poor thanks, and, for
himself, has no other amusement on earth but to make his little
experiments.--But, however, sign. To the right there--PETER
SCHLEMIHL."
I shook my head, and said: "Pardon me, sir, I do not sign that."
"Not?" replied he, in amaze; "and why not?"
"It seems to me to a certain degree serious to stake my soul on a
shadow."
"So, so," repeated he, "serious!" and he laughed almost in my face.
"And, if I might venture to ask, what sort of a thing is that soul of
yours? Have you ever seen it? And what do you think of doing with it
when you are dead? Be glad that you have found an amateur who in your
lifetime is willing to pay you for the bequest of this _x_, of this
galvanic power, or polarized Activity, or what-ever-this silly thing
may be, with something actual; that is to say, with your real shadow,
through which you may arrive at the hand of your beloved and at the
accomplishment of all your desires. Will you rather push forth, and
deliver up that poor young creature to that low bred scoundrel Rascal?
No, you must witness that with your own eyes. Here, I lend you the
magic-cap"--he drew it from his pocket--"and we will proceed unseen to
the Forester's garden."
I must confess that I was excessively ashamed of being derided by this
man. I detested him from the bottom of my heart; and I believe that
this personal antipathy withheld me, more than principle or prejudice,
from purchasing my shadow, essential as it was, by the required
signature. The thought also was intolerable to me of making the
excursion which he proposed, in his company. To see this abhorred
sneak, this mocking kobold, step between me and my beloved, two torn
and bleeding hearts, revolted my innermost feeling. I regarded what
was past as predestined, and my wretchedness as unchangeable, and
turning to the man, I said to him--
"Sir, I have sold you my shadow for this in itself most excellent
purse, and I have sufficiently repented of it. If the bargain can be
broken off, then in God's name--!" He shook his head, and made a very
gloomy face. I continued: "I will then sell you nothing further of
mine, even for this offered price of my shadow; and, therefore, I
shall sign nothing. From this you may understand, that the muffling-up
to which you invite me must be much more amusing for you than for me.
Excuse me, therefore; and as it cannot now be otherwise, let us part."
"It grieves me, Monsieur Schlemihl, that you obstinately decline the
business which I propose to you as a friend. Perhaps another time I
may be more fortunate. Till our speedy meeting again!--Apropos: Permit
me yet to show you that the things which I purchase I by no means
suffer to grow moldy, but honorably preserve, and that they are well
taken care of by me."
With that he drew my shadow out of his pocket and with a dexterous
throw unfolding it on the heath, spread it out on the sunny side of
his feet, so that he walked between two attendant shadows, his own
and mine, for mine must equally obey him and accommodate itself to and
follow all his movements.
When I once saw my poor shadow again, after so long an absence, and
beheld it degraded to so vile a service, whilst I, on its account, was
in such unspeakable trouble, my heart broke, and I began bitterly to
weep. The detested wretch swaggered with the plunder snatched from me,
and impudently renewed his proposal.
"You can yet have it. A stroke of the pen, and you snatch therewith
the poor unhappy Mina from the claws of the villain into the arms of
the most honored Count--as observed, only a stroke of the pen."
My tears burst forth with fresh impetuosity, but I turned away and
motioned to him to withdraw himself. Bendel, who, filled with anxiety,
had traced me to this spot, at this moment arrived. When the kind good
soul found me weeping, and saw my shadow, which could not be mistaken,
in the power of the mysterious gray man, he immediately resolved, was
it even by force, to restore to me the possession of my property;
and as he did not understand how to deal with such a tender thing, he
immediately assaulted the man with words, and, without much asking,
ordered him bluntly to return my property to me. Instead of an answer,
he turned his back to the innocent young fellow and went. But Bendel
up with his buckthorn cudgel which he carried, and, following on his
heels, without mercy, and with reiterated commands to give up the
shadow, made him feel the full force of his vigorous arm. He, as
accustomed to such handling, ducked his head, rounded his shoulders,
and with silent and deliberate steps pursued his way over the heath,
at once going off with my shadow and my faithful servant. I long heard
the heavy sounds roll over the waste, till they were finally lost in
the distance. I was alone, as before, with my misery.
CHAPTER VI
Left alone on the wild heath, I gave free current to my countless
tears, relieving my heart from an ineffably weary weight. But I saw no
bound, no outlet, no end to my intolerable misery, and I drank besides
with savage thirst of the fresh poison which the unknown had poured
into my wounds. When I called the image of Mina before my soul, and
the dear, sweet form appeared pale and in tears, as I saw her last in
my shame, then stepped, impudent and mocking, Rascal's shadow between
her and me; I covered my face and fled through the wild. Yet the
hideous apparition left me not, but pursued me in my flight, till I
sank breathless on the ground, and moistened it with a fresh torrent
of tears.
And all for a shadow! And this shadow a pen-stroke could have obtained
for me! I thought over the strange proposition and my refusal. All
was chaos in me. I had no longer either discernment or faculty of
comprehension.
The day went along. I stilled my hunger with wild fruits, my thirst
in the nearest mountain stream. The night fell; I lay down beneath a
tree. The damp morning awoke me out of a heavy sleep in which I heard
myself rattle in the throat as in death. Bendel must have lost all
trace of me, and it rejoiced me to think so. I would not return again
amongst men before whom I fled in terror, like the timid game of the
mountains. Thus I lived through three weary days.
On the fourth morning I found myself on a sandy plain bright with
the sun, and sat on a rock in its beams, for I loved now to enjoy its
long-withheld countenance. I silently fed my heart with its despair. A
light rustle startled me. Ready for flight I threw round me a hurried
glance; I saw no one, but in the sunny sand there glided past me a
human shadow, not unlike my own, which, wandering there alone,
seemed to have escaped from its possessor. There awoke in me a mighty
yearning. "Shadow," said I, "dost thou seek thy master? I will be he,"
and I sprang forward to seize it. I thought that if I succeeded in
treading on it so that its feet touched mine, it probably would remain
hanging there, and in time accommodate itself to me.
The shadow, on my moving, fled before me, and I was compelled to begin
a strenuous chase of the light fugitive, for which the thought of
rescuing myself from my fearful condition could alone have endowed me
with the requisite vigor. It flew toward a wood, at a great distance,
in which I must, of necessity, have lost it. I perceived this--a
horror convulsed my heart, inflamed my desire, added wings to my
speed; I gained evidently on the shadow, I came continually nearer,
I must certainly reach it. Suddenly it stopped, and turned toward me.
Like a lion on its prey, I shot with a mighty spring forward to make
seizure of it--and dashed unexpectedly against a hard and bodily
object. Invisibly I received the most unprecedented blows on the ribs
that mortal man probably ever received.
The effect of the terror in me was convulsively to close my arms,
and firmly to inclose that which stood unseen before me. In the rapid
transaction I plunged forward to the ground, but backward and under me
was a man whom I had embraced and who now first became visible.
The whole occurrence then became very naturally explicable to me. The
man must have carried the invisible bird's nest which renders him who
holds it, but not his shadow, imperceptible, and had now cast it away.
I glanced round, soon discovered the shadow of the invisible nest
itself, leaped up and toward it, and did not miss the precious prize.
Invisible and shadowless, I held the nest in my hand.
The man swiftly springing up, gazing round instantly after his
fortunate conqueror, descried on the wide sunny plain neither him nor
his shadow, for which he sought with especial avidity. For that I was
myself entirely shadowless he had no leisure to remark, nor could he
imagine such a thing. Having convinced himself that every trace had
vanished, he turned his hand against himself and tore his hair in
great despair. To me, however, the acquired treasure had given
the power and desire to mix again amongst men. I did not want for
self-satisfying palliatives for my base robbery, or, rather, I had no
need of them; and to escape from every thought of the kind, I hastened
away, not even looking round at the unhappy one, whose deploring voice
I long heard resounding behind me. Thus, at least, appeared to me the
circumstances at the time.
I was on fire to proceed to the Forester's garden, and there myself
to discern the truth of what the Detested One had told me. I knew not,
however, where I was. I climbed the next hill, in order to look round
over the country, and perceived from its summit the near city and the
Forester's garden lying at my feet. My heart beat violently, and tears
of another kind than what I had till now shed rushed into my eyes. I
should see her again! Anxious desire hastened my steps down the most
direct path. I passed unseen some peasants who came out of the city.
They were talking of me, of Rascal, and the Forest-master; I would
hear nothing--I hurried past.
I entered the garden, all the tremor of expectation in my bosom. I
seemed to hear laughter near me. I shuddered, threw a rapid glance
round me, but could discover nobody. I advanced farther. I seemed to
perceive a sound as of man's steps near me, but there was nothing to
be seen. I believed myself deceived by my ear. It was yet early, no
one in Count Peter's arbor, the garden still empty. I traversed the
well-known paths. I penetrated to the very front of the dwelling.
The same noise more distinctly followed me. I seated myself with an
agonized heart on a bench which stood in the sunny space before the
house-door. It seemed as if I had heard the unseen kobold, laughing in
mockery, seat himself near me. The key turned in the door, it opened,
and the Forest-master issued forth with papers in his hand. A mist
seemed to envelop my head. I looked up, and--horror! the man in the
gray coat sat by me, gazing on me with a satanic leer. He had drawn
his magic-cap at once over his head and mine; at his feet lay his
and my shadow peaceably by each other. He played negligently with
the well-known parchment which he held in his hand, and as the
Forest-master, busied with his documents, went to and fro in the
shadow of the arbor, he stooped familiarly to my ear and whispered
in it these words--"So then you have, notwithstanding, accepted my
invitation, and here sit we for once, two heads under one cap. All
right! all right! But now give me my bird's nest again; you have no
further need of it, and are too honest a man to wish to withhold it
from me; but there needs no thanks; I assure you that I have lent it
you with the most hearty good will." He took it unceremoniously out
of my hand, put it in his pocket, and laughed at me again, and that so
loud that the Forest-master himself looked round at the noise. I sat
there as if changed to stone.
"But you must admit," continued he, "that such a cap is much more
convenient. It covers not only your person but your shadow at the same
time, and as many others as you have a mind to take with you. See you
again today. I conduct two of them"--he laughed again. "Mark this,
Schlemihl; what we at first won't do with a good will, that will we
in the end be compelled to. I still fancy you will buy that thing
from me, take back the bride (for it is yet time), and we leave Rascal
dangling on the gallows, an easy thing for us so long as rope is to be
had. Hear you--I will give you also my cap into the bargain."
The mother came forth, and the conversation began. "How goes it with
Mina?"
"She weeps."
"Silly child! it cannot be altered!"
"Certainly not; but to give her to another so soon? Oh, man! thou art
cruel to thy own child."
"No, mother, that thou quite mistakest. When she, even before she has
wept out her childish tears, finds herself the wife of a very rich and
honorable man, she will awake comforted out of her trouble as out of a
dream, and thank God and us--that shalt thou see!"
"God grant it!"
"She possesses now, indeed, a very respectable property; but after the
stir that this unlucky affair with the adventurer has made, canst
thou believe that a partner so suitable as Mr. Rascal could be readily
found for her? Dost thou know what a fortune Mr. Rascal possesses? He
has paid six millions for estates here in the country, free from
all debts. I have had the title deeds in my own hands! He it was
who everywhere had the start of me; and, besides this, has in his
possession bills on Thomas John for about three and a half millions."
"He must have stolen enormously!"
"What talk is that again! He has wisely saved what would otherwise
have been lavished away."
"A man that has worn livery--"
"Stupid stuff! He has, however, an unblemished shadow."
"Thou art right, but--"
The man in the gray coat laughed and looked at me. The door opened and
Mina came forth. She supported herself on the arm of a chambermaid,
silent tears rolling down her lovely pale cheeks. She seated herself
on a stool which was placed for her under the lime trees, and her
father took a chair by her. He tenderly took her hand, and addressed
her with tender words, while she began violently to weep.
"Thou art my good, dear child, and thou wilt be reasonable, wilt not
wish to distress thy old father, who seeks only thy happiness. I can
well conceive it, dear heart, that it has sadly shaken thee. Thou art
wonderfully escaped from thy misfortunes! Before we discovered the
scandalous imposition, thou hadst loved this unworthy one greatly;
see, Mina, I know it, and upbraid thee not for it. I myself, dear
child, also loved him so long as I looked upon him as a great
gentleman. But now thou seest how different all has turned out. What!
every poodle has his own shadow, and should my dear child have a
husband--no! thou thinkest, indeed, no more about him. Listen, Mina!
Now a man solicits thy hand, who does not shun the sunshine, an
honorable man, who truly is no prince, but who possesses ten millions,
ten times more than thou; a man who will make my dear child happy.
Answer me not, make no opposition, be my good, dutiful daughter, let
thy loving father care for thee, and dry thy tears. Promise me to give
thy hand to Mr. Rascal. Say, wilt thou promise me this?"
She answered with a faint voice--"I have no will, no wish further upon
earth. Happen with me what my father will."
At this moment Mr. Rascal was announced, and stepped impudently into
the circle. Mina lay in a swoon. My detested companion glanced angrily
at me, and whispered in hurried words--"And that can you endure? What
then flows instead of blood in your veins?" He scratched with a
hasty movement a slight wound in my hand, blood flowed, and he
continued--"Actually red blood!--So sign then!" I had the parchment
and the pen in my hand.
CHAPTER VII
My wish, dear Chamisso, is merely to submit myself to thy judgment,
not to endeavor to bias it. I have long passed the severest sentence
on myself, for I have nourished the tormenting worm in my heart. It
hovered during this solemn moment of my life incessantly before my
soul, and I could only lift my eyes to it with a doubting glance, with
humility and contrition. Dear friend, he who in levity only sets his
foot out of the right road, is unawares conducted into other paths,
which draw him downward and ever downward; he then sees in vain the
guiding stars glitter in heaven; there remains to him no choice;
he must descend unpausingly the declivity and become a voluntary
sacrifice to Nemesis. After the hasty false step which had laid the
curse upon me, I had, sinning through love, forced myself into the
fortunes of another being, and what remained for me but that, where
I had sowed destruction, where speedy salvation was demanded of me, I
should blindly rush forward to the rescue?--for the last hour struck!
Think not so meanly of me, my Adelbert, as to imagine that I should
have regarded any price that was demanded as too high, that I should
have begrudged anything that was mine even more than my gold. No,
Adelbert! but my soul was possessed with the most unconquerable
hatred of this mysterious sneaker along crooked paths. I might do him
injustice, but every degree of association with him revolted me. And
here stepped forth, as so frequently in my life, and as in general
so often in the history of the world, an event instead of an action.
Since then I have achieved reconciliation with myself. I have learned,
in the first place, to reverence necessity; and what is more than the
action performed, the event accomplished--her propriety. Then I have
learned to venerate this necessity as a wise Providence, which lives
through that great collective machine in which we officiate simply as
coöperating, impelling, and impelled wheels. What shall be, must be;
what should be, happened, and not without that Providence, which I
ultimately learned to reverence in my own fate and in the fate of
those on whom mine thus impinged.
I know not whether I shall ascribe it to the excitement of my soul
under the impulse of such mighty sensations; or to the exhaustion
of my physical strength, which during the last days such unwonted
privations had enfeebled; or whether, finally, to the desolating
commotion which the presence of this gray fiend excited in my whole
nature--be that as it may, as I was on the point of signing I fell
into a deep swoon and lay a long time as in the arms of death.
Stamping of feet and curses were the first sounds which struck my
ear as I returned to consciousness. I opened my eyes; it was dark; my
detested attendant was busied scolding me. "Is not that to behave like
an old woman? Up with you, man, and complete off-hand what you have
resolved on, if you have not taken another thought and had rather
blubber!" I raised myself with difficulty from the ground and gazed
in silence around. It was late in the evening; festive music resounded
from the brightly illuminated Forester's house; various groups of
people wandered through the garden walks. One couple came near in
conversation, and seated themselves on the bench which I had just
quitted. They talked of the union this morning solemnized between the
rich Mr. Rascal and the daughter of the house. So, then, it had taken
place!
I tore the magic-cap of the already vanished unknown from my head, and
hastened in brooding silence toward the garden gate, plunging myself
into the deepest night of the thicket and striking along the path past
Count Peter's arbor. But invisibly my tormenting spirit accompanied
me, pursuing me with keenest reproaches. "These then are one's thanks
for the pains which one has taken to support Monsieur, who has weak
nerves, through the long precious day. And one shall act the fool in
the play. Good, Mr. Wronghead, fly you from me if you please, but we
are, nevertheless, inseparable. You have my gold and I your shadow,
and this will allow us no repose. Did anybody ever hear of a shadow
forsaking its master? Your's draws me after you till you take it back
again graciously, and I get rid of it. What you have hesitated to do
out of fresh pleasure, will you, only too late, be compelled to seek
through new weariness and disgust. One cannot escape one's fate." He
continued speaking in the same tone. I fled in vain; he relaxed not,
but, ever present, mockingly talked of gold and shadow. I could come
to no single thought of my own.
I struck through empty streets toward my house. When I stood before
it, and gazed at it, I could scarcely recognize it. No light shone
through the dashed-in windows. The doors were closed; no throng of
servants was moving therein. There was a laugh near me. "Ha! ha! so
goes it! But you'll probably find your Bendel at home, for he was the
other day providently sent back so weary that he has most likely kept
his bed since." He laughed again. "He will have a story to tell! Well
then, for the present, good night! We meet again speedily!"
I had rung the bell repeatedly; light appeared; Bendel demanded from
within who rung. When the good man recognized my voice, he could
scarcely restrain his joy. The door flew open and we stood weeping in
each other's arms. I found him greatly changed, weak and ill; but for
me--my hair had become quite gray!
He conducted me through the desolated rooms to an inner apartment
which had been spared. He brought food and wine, and we seated
ourselves, and he again began to weep. He related to me that he the
other day had cudgeled the gray-clad man whom he had encountered with
my shadow, so long and so far that he had lost all trace of me and had
sunk to the earth in utter fatigue; that after this, as he could not
find me, he returned home, whither presently the mob, at Rascal's
instigation, came rushing in fury, dashed in the windows, and
gave full play to their lust of demolition. Thus did they to their
benefactor. The servants had fled various ways. The police had ordered
me, as a suspicious person, to quit the city, and had allowed only
four-and-twenty hours in which to evacuate their jurisdiction. To that
which I already knew of Rascal's affluence and marriage, he had yet
much to add. This scoundrel, from whom all had proceeded that had been
done against me, must, from the beginning, have been in possession of
my secret. It appeared that, attracted by gold, he had contrived to
thrust himself upon me, and at the very first had procured a key to
the gold cupboard, where he had laid the foundation of that fortune
whose augmentation he could now afford to despise.
All this Bendel narrated to me with abundant tears, and then wept for
joy that he again beheld me, again had me; and that after he had long
doubted whither this misfortune might have led me, he saw me bear it
so calmly and collectedly; for such an aspect had despair now assumed
in me. My misery stood before me in its enormity and unchangeableness.
I had wept my last tear; not another cry could be extorted from my
heart; I presented to my fate my bare head with chill indifference.
"Bendel," I said, "thou knowest my lot. Not without earlier blame has
my heavy punishment befallen me. Thou, innocent man, shalt no longer
bind thy destiny to mine. I do not desire it. I leave this very night;
saddle me a horse; I ride alone; thou remainest; it is my will. Here
still must remain some chests of gold; that retain thou; but I will
alone wander unsteadily through the world. But if ever a happier hour
should smile upon me, and fortune look on me with reconciled eyes,
then will I remember thee, for I have wept upon thy firmly faithful
bosom in heavy and agonizing hours."
With a broken heart was this honest man compelled to obey this last
command of his master, at which his soul shrunk with terror. I was
deaf to his prayers, to his representations; blind to his tears. He
brought me out my steed. Once more I pressed the weeping man to my
bosom, sprang into the saddle, and under the shroud of night hastened
from the grave of my existence, regardless which way my horse
conducted me, since I had longer on earth no aim, no wish, no hope.
CHAPTER VIII
A pedestrian soon joined me, who begged, after he had walked for some
time by the side of my horse, that, as we went the same way, he might
be allowed to lay a cloak which he carried, on the steed behind me.
I permitted it in silence. He thanked me with easy politeness for the
trifling service; praised my horse; and thence took occasion to extol
the happiness and power of the rich, and let himself, I know not how,
fall into a kind of monologue, in which he had me now merely for a
listener.
He unfolded his views of life and of the world, and came very soon
upon metaphysics, whose task is to discover the Word that should solve
all riddles. He stated his thesis with great clearness and proceeded
onward to the proofs.
Thou knowest, my friend, that I have clearly discovered, since I have
run through the schools of the philosophers, that I have by no means a
turn for philosophical speculations, and that I have totally
renounced for myself this field. Since then I have left many things
to themselves; abandoned the desire to know and to comprehend many
things; and as thou thyself advised me, have, trusting to my common
sense, followed as far as I was able the voice within me in my own
way. Now this rhetorician seemed to me to raise with great talent
a firmly constructed fabric, which was at once self-based and
self-supported, and stood as by an innate necessity. I missed in it
completely, however, what most of all I was desirous to find, and so
it became for me merely a work of art, whose elegant compactness and
completeness served to charm the eye only; nevertheless I listened
willingly to the eloquent man who drew my attention from my grief to
him; and I would have gladly yielded myself wholly up to him, had he
captivated my heart as much as my understanding.
Meanwhile the time had passed, and unobserved the dawn had already
enlightened the heaven. I was horrified as I looked up suddenly, and
saw the glory of colors unfold itself in the east, which announced
the approach of the sun; while at this hour in which the shadows
ostentatiously display themselves in their greatest extent, there was
no protection from it; no refuge in the open country to be descried.
And I was not alone! I cast a glance at my companion, and was again
terror-stricken. It was no other than the man in the gray coat!
He smiled at my alarm, and went on without allowing me a single word.
"Let, however, as is the way of the world, our mutual advantage for
awhile unite us. It is all in good time for separating. The road here
along the mountain-range, though you have not yet thought of it, is,
nevertheless, the only one into which you could logically have struck.
Down into the valley you cannot venture; and still less will you
desire to return again over the heights whence you came; and this
also happens to be my way. I see that you already turn pale before
the rising sun. I will, for the time we keep company, lend you your
shadow, and you, in exchange, tolerate me in your society. You have
no longer your Bendel with you, I will do you good service. You do not
like me, and I am sorry for it; but, notwithstanding, you can make use
of me. The devil is not so black as he is painted. Yesterday you
vexed me, it is true; I will not upbraid you with it today; and I have
already shortened the way hither for you; that you must admit. Only
just take your shadow again awhile on trial."
The sun had ascended; people appeared on the road; I accepted, though
with internal repugnance, the proposal. Smiling he let my shadow glide
to the ground, which immediately took its place on that of the horse,
and trotted gaily by my side. I was in the strangest state of mind.
I rode past a group of country-people, who made way for a man of
consequence, reverently, and with bared heads. I rode on, and gazed
with greedy eyes and a palpitating; heart on this my quondam shadow
which I had now borrowed from a stranger, yes, from an enemy.
The man went carelessly near me, and even whistled a tune--he on foot,
I on horseback; a dizziness seized me; the temptation was too great;
I suddenly turned the reins, clapped spurs to the horse, and struck at
full speed into a side-path. But I carried not off the shadow, which
at the turning glided from the horse and awaited its lawful possessor
on the high road. I was compelled with shame to turn back. The man in
the gray coat, when he had calmly finished his tune, laughed at me,
set the shadow right again for me and informed me that it would
hang fast and remain with me only when I was disposed to become the
rightful proprietor. "I hold you," continued he, "fast by the shadow,
and you cannot escape me. A rich man, like you, needs a shadow;
it cannot be otherwise, and you only are to blame that you did not
perceive that sooner."
I continued my journey on the same road; the comforts and the splendor
of life again surrounded me; I could move about free and conveniently,
since I possessed a shadow, although only a borrowed one; and I
everywhere inspired the respect which riches command. But I carried
death in my heart. My strange companion, who gave himself out as
the unworthy servant of the richest man in the world, possessed
an extraordinary professional readiness, prompt and clever beyond
comparison, the very model of a valet for a rich man, but he stirred
not from my side, perpetually debating with me and ever manifesting
his confidence that, at length, were it only to be rid of him, I
would resolve to settle the affair of the shadow. He had become as
burdensome to me as he was hateful. I was even in fear of him. He had
made me dependent on him. He held me, after he had conducted me
back into the glory of the world from which I had fled. I was almost
obliged to tolerate his eloquence, and felt that he was in the right.
A rich man must have a shadow, and, as I desired to command the rank
which he had contrived again to make necessary to me, I saw but one
issue. By this, however, I stood fast: after having sacrificed my
love, after my life had been blighted, I would never sign away my soul
to this creature, for all the shadows in the world. I knew not how it
would end.
We sat, one day, before a cave which the strangers who frequent
these mountains are accustomed to visit. One hears there the rush
of subterranean streams roaring up from immeasurable depths, and the
stone cast in seemed, in its resounding fall, to find no bottom. He
painted to me, as he often did, with a vivid power of imagination
and in the lustrous charms of the most brilliant colors, the most
carefully finished pictures of what I might achieve in the world
by virtue of my purse, if I had but once again my shadow in my
possession. With my elbows resting on my knees, I kept my face
concealed in my hands and listened to the false one, my heart divided
between his seduction and my own strong will. I could not longer stand
such an inward conflict, and the deciding strife began.
"You appear, sir, to forget that I have indeed allowed you, upon
certain conditions, to remain in my company, but that I have reserved
my perfect freedom."
"If you command it, I pack up."
He was accustomed to this menace. I was silent. He began immediately
to roll up my shadow. I turned pale, but I let it proceed. There
followed a long pause; he first broke it.
"You cannot bear me, sir. You hate me; I know it; yet why do you
hate me? Is it because you attacked me on the highway, and sought to
deprive me by violence of my bird's nest? Or is it because you have
endeavored, in a thievish manner, to cheat me out of my property, the
shadow, which was intrusted to you entirely on your honor? I, for my
part, do not hate you in spite of all this. I find it quite natural
that you should seek to avail yourself of all your advantages,
cunning, and power. Neither do I object to your very strict principles
and to your fancy to think like honesty itself. In fact, I think not
so strictly as you; I merely act as you think. Or have I at any time
pressed my finger on your throat in order to bring to me your most
precious soul, for which I have a fancy? Have I, on account of my
bartered purse, let a servant loose on you? Have I sought to swindle
you out of it?" I had nothing to oppose to this, and he proceeded:
"Very good, sir! very good! You cannot endure me; I know that very
well, and am by no means angry with you for it. We must part, that is
clear, and, in fact, you begin to be very wearisome to me. In order,
then, to rid you of my continued, shame-inspiring presence, I counsel
you once more to purchase this thing from me." I extended to him the
purse: "At that price?"--"No!"
I sighed deeply, and added, "Be it so, then. I insist, sir, that we
part, and that you no longer obstruct my path in a world which, it
is to be hoped, has room enough in it for us both." He smiled, and
replied: "I go, sir; but first let me instruct you how you may ring
for me when you desire to see again your most devoted servant. You
have only to shake your purse, so that the eternal gold pieces therein
jingle, and the sound will instantly attract me. Every one thinks of
his own advantage in this world. You see that I at the same time
am thoughtful of yours, since I reveal to you a new power. Oh! this
purse!--had the moths already devoured your shadow, that would still
constitute a strong bond between us. Enough, you have me in my gold.
Should you have any commands, even when far off, for your servant, you
know that I can show myself very active in the service of my friends,
and the rich stand particularly well with me. You have seen it
yourself. Only your shadow, sir--allow me to tell you that--never
again, except on one sole condition."
Forms of the past time swept before my soul. I demanded hastily--"Had
you a signature from Mr. John?" He smiled. "With so good a friend it
was by no means necessary." "Where is he? By God, I wish to know it!"
He hesitatingly plunged his hand into his pocket, and, dragged thence
by the hair, appeared Thomas John's ghastly disfigured form, and the
blue death-lips moved themselves with heavy words: "_Justo judicio Dei
judicatus sum; justo judicio Dei condemnatus sum_." I shuddered with
horror, and dashing the ringing purse into the abyss, I spoke to him
the last words--"I adjure thee, horrible one, in the name of God, take
thyself hence, and never again show thyself in my sight!"
He arose gloomily, and instantly vanished behind the masses of rock
which bounded this wild, overgrown spot.
CHAPTER IX
I sat there without shadow and without money, but a heavy weight was
taken from my bosom. I was calm. Had I not also lost my love, or had I
in that loss felt myself free from blame, I believe that I should have
been happy; but I knew not what I should do. I examined my pockets; I
found yet several gold pieces there; I counted them and laughed. I
had my horses below at the inn; I was ashamed of returning thither; I
must, at least, wait till the sun was gone down; it stood yet high in
the heavens. I laid myself down in the shade of the nearest trees, and
calmly fell asleep.
Lovely shapes blended themselves before me in charming dance into a
pleasing dream. Mina with a flower-wreath in her hair floated by me,
and smiled kindly upon me. The noble Bendel also was crowned with
flowers, and went past with a friendly greeting. I saw many besides,
and I believe thee too, Chamisso, in the distant throng. A bright
light appeared, but no one had a shadow, and, what was stranger, it
had by no means a bad effect. Flowers and songs, love and joy, under
groves of palm! I could neither hold fast nor interpret the moving,
lightly floating, lovable forms; but I knew that I dreamed such a
dream with joy, and was careful to avoid waking. I was already awake,
but still kept my eyes closed in order to retain the fading apparition
longer before my soul.
I finally opened my eyes; the sun stood still high in the heavens, but
in the east; I had slept through the night. I took it for a sign that
I should not return to the inn. I gave up readily as lost what I yet
possessed there, and determined to strike on foot into a branch road,
which led along the wood-grown feet of the mountains, leaving it to
fate to fulfil what it had yet in store for me. I looked not behind
me, and thought not even of applying to Bendel, whom I left rich
behind me, and which I could readily have done. I considered the
new character which I should support in the world. My dress was very
modest. I had on an old black polonaise, which I had already worn in
Berlin, and which, I know not how, had first come again into my hands
for this journey. I had also a traveling cap on my head, a pair of old
boots on my feet. I arose, and cut me on the spot a knotty stick as a
memorial, and pursued my wandering.
I met in the wood an old peasant who, friendly, greeted me, and with
whom I entered into conversation. I inquired, like an inquisitive
traveler, first the way, then about the country and its inhabitants,
the productions of the mountains, and many such things. He answered my
questions sensibly and loquaciously. We came to the bed of a mountain
torrent, which had spread its devastations over a wide tract of the
forest. I shuddered involuntarily at the sun-bright space, and allowed
the countryman to go first; but in the midst of this dangerous
spot, he stood still, and turned to relate to me the history of this
desolation. He saw immediately my defect, and paused in the midst of
his discourse.
"But how does that happen--the gentleman has actually no shadow!"
"Alas! alas!" replied I, sighing, "during a long and severe illness,
my hair, nails, and shadow fell off. See, father, at my age, my hair,
which is renewed again, is quite white, the nails very short, and the
shadow--that will not grow again."
"Ay! ay!" responded the old man, shaking his head--"no shadow, that
is bad! That was a bad illness that the gentleman had." But he did
not continue his narrative, and at the next cross-way which presented
itself left me without saying a word. Bitter tears trembled anew upon
my cheeks, and my cheerfulness was gone.
I pursued my way with a sorrowful heart, and sought no further the
society of men. I kept myself in the darkest wood, and was many a time
compelled, in order to pass over a space where the sun shone, to wait
for whole hours, lest some human eye should forbid me the transit. In
the evening I sought shelter in the villages. I went particularly in
quest of a mine in the mountains where I hoped to get work under the
earth; since, besides that my present situation made it imperative
that I should provide for my support, I had discovered that the most
active labor alone could protect me from my own annihilating thoughts.
A few rainy days advanced me well on the way, but at the expense of
my boots, whose soles had been calculated for Count Peter, and not for
the pedestrian laborer. I was already barefoot and had to procure a
pair of new boots. The next morning I transacted this business with
much gravity in a village where a wake was being held, and where in
a booth old and new boots were sold. I selected and bargained long. I
was forced to deny myself a new pair, which I would gladly have had,
for the extravagant price frightened me. I therefore contented myself
with an old pair, which were yet good and strong, and which the
handsome, blond-haired boy who kept the stall, for present cash
payment handed to me with a friendly smile and wished me good luck on
my journey. I put them on at once, and left the place by the northern
gate.
I was deeply absorbed in my thoughts and scarcely saw where I set
my feet, for I was pondering on the mine which I hoped to reach by
evening, and where I hardly knew how I should introduce myself. I had
not advanced two hundred strides when I observed that I had gone out
of the way. I therefore looked round me, and found myself in a wild
and ancient forest, where the axe appeared never to have been wielded.
I still pressed forward a few steps, and beheld myself in the midst
of desert rocks which were overgrown only with moss and lichens, and
between which lay fields of snow and ice. The air was intensely cold;
I looked round--the wood had vanished behind me. I took a few strides
more--and around me reigned the silence of death; the ice whereon I
stood boundlessly extended itself, and on it rested a thick, heavy
fog. The sun stood blood-red on the edge of the horizon. The cold was
insupportable.
I knew not what had happened to me. The benumbing frost compelled me
to hasten my steps; I heard only the roar of distant waters; a step,
and I was on the icy margin of an ocean. Innumerable herds of seals
plunged rushing before me in the flood. I pursued this shore; I saw
naked rocks, land, birch and pine forests; I now advanced for a few
minutes right onward. It became stifling hot. I looked around--I
stood amongst beautifully cultivated rice-fields, and beneath
mulberry-trees. I seated myself in their shade; I looked at my watch;
I had left the market town only a quarter of an hour before. I fancied
that I dreamed; I bit my tongue to awake myself, but I was really
awake. I closed my eyes in order to collect my thoughts. I heard
before me singular accents pronounced through the nose. I looked up.
Two Chinese, unmistakable from their Asiatic physiognomy, if indeed
I would have given no credit to their costume, addressed me in their
speech with the accustomed salutations of their country. I arose and
stepped two paces backward; I saw them no more. The landscape
was totally changed--trees and forests instead of rice-fields. I
contemplated these trees and the plants which bloomed around me, which
I recognized as the growth of southeastern Asia. I wished to approach
one of these trees--one step, and again all was changed. I marched
now like a recruit who is drilled, and strode slowly and with measured
steps. Wonderfully diversified lands, rivers, meadows, mountain
chains, steppes, deserts of sand, unrolled themselves before my
astonished eyes. There was no doubt of it--I had seven-league boots on
my feet.
CHAPTER X
I fell in speechless adoration on my knees and shed tears of
thankfulness, for suddenly my future stood clear before my soul. For
early offense thrust out from the society of men, I was cast, for
compensation, upon Nature, which I ever loved; the earth was given me
as a rich garden, study for the object and strength of my life, and
science for its goal. It was no resolution which I adopted. I only
have since, with severe, unremitted diligence, striven faithfully
to represent what then stood clear and perfect before my eye, and my
satisfaction has depended on the agreement of the representation with
the original.
I roused myself in order, without delay, and with a hasty survey, to
take possession of the field where I should hereafter reap. I stood on
the heights of Tibet, and the sun, which had risen upon me only a few
hours before, now already stooped to the evening sky. I wandered over
Asia from east to west, overtaking him in his course, and entered
Africa. I gazed about me with eager curiosity, as I repeatedly
traversed it in all directions. As I surveyed the ancient pyramids
and temples in passing through Egypt, I descried in the desert not far
from hundred-gated Thebes, the caves where the Christian anchorites
once dwelt. It was suddenly firm and clear in me--here is thy home!
I selected one of the most concealed which was at the same time
spacious, convenient, and inaccessible to the jackals, for my future
abode, and again went forward.
I passed, at the pillars of Hercules, over to Europe, and when I
reviewed the southern and northern provinces, I crossed from northern
Asia over the polar glaciers to Greenland and America, traversed both
parts of that continent, and the winter which already reigned in the
south drove me speedily back northward from Cape Horn.
I tarried awhile till it was day in eastern Asia, and, after some
repose, continued my wandering. I traced through both Americas the
mountain chain which constitutes the highest known acclivities on our
globe. I stalked slowly and cautiously from summit to summit, now
over flaming volcanoes, now snow-crowned peaks, often breathing
with difficulty, when, reaching Mount Saint Elias, I sprang across
Behring's Straits to Asia. I followed the western shores in their
manifold windings, and examined with especial care to ascertain which
of the islands were accessible to me. From the peninsula of Malacca my
boots carried me to Sumatra, Java, Bali and Lamboc. I attempted often
with danger, and always in vain, a northwest passage over the lesser
islet and rocks with which this sea is studded, to Borneo and the
other islands of this Archipelago. I was compelled to abandon the
hope. At length I seated myself on the extreme portion of Lamboc, and
gazing toward the south and east, wept, as at the fast closed bars
of my prison, that I had so soon discovered my limits. New Holland so
extraordinary and so essentially necessary to the comprehension of the
earth and its sun-woven garment, the vegetable and the animal world,
with the South Sea and its Zoophyte islands, was interdicted to me,
and thus, at the very outset, all that I should gather and build up
was destined to remain a mere fragment! Oh, my Adelbert, what, after
all, are the endeavors of men!
Often did I in the severest winter of the southern hemisphere,
endeavor, passing the polar glaciers westward, to leave behind me
those two hundred strides out from Cape Horn, which sundered me
probably from Van Diemen's Land and New Holland, regardless of my
return or whether this dismal region should close upon me as my
coffin-lid--making desperate leaps from ice-drift to ice-drift, and
bidding defiance to the cold and the sea. In vain! I never reached New
Holland, but, every time, I came back to Lamboc, seated myself on its
farthest peak, and wept again, with my face turned toward the south
and east, as at the fast closed bars of my prison.
I tore myself at length from this spot, and returned with a sorrowful
heart into inner Asia. I traversed that farther, pursuing the morning
dawn westward, and came, yet in the night, to my proposed home in the
Thebais, which I had touched upon in the afternoon of the day before.
As soon as I was somewhat rested, and when it was day again in Europe,
I made it my first care to procure everything which I wanted. First of
all, stop-shoes; for I had experienced how inconvenient it was when
I wished to examine near objects, not to be able to slacken my stride
except by pulling off my boots. A pair of slippers drawn over them had
completely the effect which I anticipated, and later I always carried
two pairs, since I sometimes threw them from my feet, without having
time to pick them up again, when lions, men, or hyenas startled
me from my botanizing. My very excellent watch was, for the short
duration of my passage, a capital chronometer. Besides this I needed a
sextant, some scientific instruments, and books.
To procure all this, I made several anxious journeys to London and
Paris, which, auspiciously for me, a mist just then overshadowed.
As the remains of my enchanted gold was now exhausted, I easily
accomplished the payment by gathering African ivory, in which,
however, I was obliged to select only the smallest tusks, as not too
heavy for me. I was soon furnished and equipped with all these, and
commenced immediately, as private philosopher, my new course of life.
I roamed about the earth, now determining the altitudes of mountains;
now the temperature of its springs and the air; now contemplating the
animal, now inquiring into the vegetable tribes. I hastened from the
equator to the pole, from one world to the other, comparing facts with
facts. The eggs of the African ostrich or the northern sea-fowl, and
fruits, especially of the tropical palms and bananas, were even
my ordinary food. In lieu of happiness I had tobacco, and of human
society and the ties of love, one faithful poodle, which guarded my
cave in the Thebais, and, when I returned home with fresh treasures,
sprang joyfully toward me and gave me still a human feeling that I was
not alone on the earth. An adventure was yet destined to conduct me
back amongst mankind.
CHAPTER XI
As I once scotched my boots on the shores of the north and gathered
lichens and sea-weed, an ice-bear came unawares upon me round the
corner of a rock. Flinging off my slippers, I would step over to an
opposite island, to which a naked crag which protruded midway from
the waves offered me a passage. I stepped with one foot firmly on
the rock, and plunged over on the other side into the sea, one of my
slippers having unobserved remained fast on the foot.
The excessive cold seized on me; I with difficulty rescued my life
from this danger; and the moment I reached land, I ran with the utmost
speed to the Lybyan desert in order to dry myself in the sun, but,
as I was here exposed, it burned me so furiously on the head that I
staggered back again very ill toward the north. I sought to relieve
myself by rapid motion, and ran with swift, uncertain steps, from west
to east, from east to west. I found myself now in the day, now in the
night; now in summer, now in the winter's cold.
I know not how long I thus reeled about on the earth. A burning fever
glowed in my veins; with deepest distress I felt my senses forsaking
me. As mischief would have it, in my incautious career, I now trod on
some one's foot; I must have hurt him; I received a heavy blow, and
fell to the ground.
When I again returned to consciousness, I lay comfortably in a good
bed, which stood amongst many other beds in a handsome hall. Some one
sat at my head; people went through the hall from one bed to another.
They came to mine, and spoke together about me. They styled me _Number
Twelve_; and on the wall at my feet stood--yes, certainly it was no
delusion, I could distinctly read on a black tablet of marble in great
golden letters, quite correctly written, my name--
PETER SCHLEMIHL.
On the tablet beneath my name were two other rows of letters, but I
was too weak to put them together. I again closed my eyes.
I heard something of which the subject was Peter Schlemihl read aloud,
and articulately, but I could not collect the sense. I saw a friendly
man, and a very lovely woman in black dress appear at my bedside. The
forms were not strange to me, and yet I could not recognize them.
Some time went on, and I recovered my strength. I was called _Number
Twelve_; and _Number Twelve_, on account of his long beard, passed for
a Jew, on which account, however, he was not at all the less carefully
treated. That he had no shadow appeared to have been unobserved. My
boots, as I was assured, were, with all that I had brought hither, in
good keeping, in order to be restored to me on my recovery. The place
in which I lay was called the SCHLEMIHLIUM. What was daily read aloud
concerning Peter Schlemihl was an exhortation to pray for him as the
Founder and Benefactor of this institution. The friendly man whom I
had seen by my bed was Bendel; the lovely woman was Mina.
I recovered unrecognized in the Schlemihlium; and learned yet further
that I was in Bendel's native city, where, with the remains of my
otherwise unblessed gold, he had in my name founded this
Hospital, where the unhappy blessed me, and himself maintained its
superintendence. Mina was a widow. An unhappy criminal process had
cost Mr. Rascal his life, and her the greater part of her property.
Her parents were no more. She lived here as a pious widow, and
practised works of mercy.
Once she conversed with Mr. Bendel at the bedside of _Number Twelve_.
"Why, noble lady, will you so often expose yourself to the bad
atmosphere which prevails here? Does fate then deal so hardly with you
that you wish to die?"
"No, Mr. Bendel, since I have dreamed out my long dream, and have
awoke in myself, all is well with me; since then I crave not, and fear
not, death. Since then, I reflect calmly on the past and the future.
Is it not also with a still inward happiness that you now, in so
devout a manner, serve your master and friend?"
"Thank God, yes, noble lady. But we have seen wonderful things; we
have unwarily drunk much good, and bitter woes, out of the full cup.
Now it is empty, and we may believe that the whole has been only a
trial, and, armed with wise discernment, awaits the real beginning.
The real beginning is of another fashion; and we wish not back the
first jugglery, and are on the whole glad, such as it was, to have
lived through it. I feel also within me a confidence that it must now
be better than formerly with our old friend."
"Within me too," replied the lovely widow, and then passed on.
The conversation left a deep impression upon me, but I was undecided
in myself whether I should make myself known or depart hence
unrecognized. I took my resolve. I requested paper and pencil, and
wrote these words--"It is indeed better with your old friend now than
formerly, and if he does penance it is the penance of reconciliation."
Hereupon I desired to dress myself, as I found myself stronger. The
key of the small wardrobe which stood near my bed was brought, and I
found therein all that belonged to me. I put on my clothes, suspended
my botanical case, in which I rejoiced still to find my northern
lichens, round my black polonaise, drew on my boots, laid the written
paper on my bed, and, as the door opened, I was already far on the way
to the Thebais.
As I took the way along the Syrian coast, on which I for the last time
had wandered from home, I perceived my poor Figaro coming toward me.
This excellent poodle, which had long expected his master at home,
seemed to desire to trace him out. I stood still and called to him.
He sprang barking toward me, with a thousand moving assurances of his
inmost and most extravagant joy. I took him up under my arm, for in
truth he could not follow me, and brought him with me home again.
I found all in its old order, and returned gradually, as my strength
was recruited, to my former employment and mode of life, except that
I kept myself for a whole year out of the, to me, wholly insupportable
polar cold. And thus, my dear Chamisso, I live to this day. My boots
are no worse for the wear, as that very learned work of the celebrated
Tieckius, _De Rebus Gestis Pollicilli_, at first led me to fear. Their
force remains unimpaired, my strength only decays; yet I have the
comfort to have exerted it in a continuous and not fruitless pursuit
of one object. I have, so far as my boots could carry me, become more
fundamentally acquainted than any man before me with the earth,
its shape, its elevations, its temperatures, the changes of its
atmosphere, the exhibitions of its magnetic power, and the life upon
it, especially in the vegetable world. The facts I have recorded with
the greatest possible exactness and in perspicuous order in several
works, and stated my deductions and views briefly in several
treatises. I have settled the geography of the interior of Africa,
and of the northern polar regions; of the interior of Asia, and its
eastern shores. My _Historia Stirpium Plantarum Utriusque Orbis_
stands as a grand fragment of the _Flora Universalis Terrae_, and as
a branch of my _Systema Naturae_. I believe that I have therein not
merely augmented, at a moderate calculation, the amount of known
species, more than one-third, but have done something for the _Natural
System_, and for the _Geography of Plants_. I shall labor diligently
at my _Fauna_. I shall take care that, before my death, my works shall
be deposited in the Berlin University.
And thee, my dear Chamisso, have I selected as the preserver of my
singular history, which, perhaps, when I have vanished from the earth,
may afford valuable instruction to many of its inhabitants. But thou,
my friend, if thou wilt live among men, learn before all things to
reverence the shadow, and then the gold. Wishest thou to live only for
thyself and for thy better self--oh, then!--thou needest no counsel.
ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN
* * * * *
THE GOLDEN POT[44] (1814)
TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE
FIRST VIGIL
The mishaps of the student Anselmus. Conrector Paulmann's sanitary
canaster and the gold-green snakes.
On Ascension-day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, a young man in
Dresden came running through the Black Gate, falling right into a
basket of apples and cakes, which an old and very ugly woman was
there exposing to sale. All that escaped being smashed to pieces was
scattered away, and the street-urchins joyfully divided the booty
which this quick gentleman had thrown in the way. At the murder-shriek
which the crone set up, her gossips, leaving their cake and
brandy-tables, encircled the young man, and with plebeian violence
stormfully scolded him, so that, for shame and vexation, he uttered
no word, but merely held out his small and by no means particularly
well-filled purse, which the crone eagerly clutched and stuck into her
pocket. The firm ring now opened; but as the young man started off,
the crone called after him: "Ay, run, run thy ways, thou Devil's bird!
To the crystal run--to the crystal!" The squealing, creaking voice
of the woman had something unearthly in it, so that the promenaders
paused in amazement, and the laugh, which at first had been universal,
instantly died away. The student Anselmus, for the young man was no
other, felt himself, though he did not in the least understand these
singular phrases, nevertheless seized with a certain involuntary
horror; and he quickened his steps still more, to escape the curious
looks of the multitude, which were all turned toward him. As he
worked his way through the crowd of well-dressed people, he heard them
murmuring on all sides: "Poor young fellow! Ha! what a cursed bedlam
it is!" The mysterious words of the crone had, oddly enough, given
this ludicrous adventure a sort of tragic turn; and the youth, before
unobserved, was now looked after with a certain sympathy. The ladies,
for his fine shape and handsome face, which the glow of inward anger
was rendering still more expressive, forgave him this awkward step, as
well as the dress he wore, though it was utterly at variance with all
mode. His pike-gray frock was shaped as if the tailor had known the
modern form only by hearsay; and his well-kept black satin lower
habiliments gave the whole a certain pedagogic air, to which the gait
and gesture of the wearer did not at all correspond.
The student had almost reached the end of the alley which leads out to
the Linke Bath; but his breath could stand such a rate no longer. From
running, he took to walking; but scarcely did he yet dare to lift an
eye from the ground; for he still saw apples and cakes dancing round
him, and every kind look from this or that fair damsel was to him but
the reflex of the mocking laughter at the Black Gate. In this mood, he
had got to the entrance of the bath; one group of holiday people after
the other were moving in. Music of wind-instruments resounded from the
place, and the din of merry guests was growing louder and louder. The
poor student Anselmus was almost on the point of weeping; for he too
had expected, Ascension-day having always been a family-festival with
him, to participate in the felicities of the Linkean paradise; nay, he
had purposed even to go the length of a half "portion" of coffee with
rum, and a whole bottle of double beer, and, that he might carouse
at his ease, had put more money in his purse than was properly
permissible and feasible. And now, by this fatal step into the
apple-basket, all that he had about him had been swept away. Of
coffee, of double beer, of music, of looking at the bright damsels--in
a word, of all his fancied enjoyments, there was now nothing more to
be said. He glided slowly past, and at last turned down the Elbe road,
which at that time happened to be quite solitary.
[Illustration: Permission Berlin Photo Co., New York. HENSEL
ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN]
Beneath an elder-tree, which had grown out through the wall, he found
a kind green resting-place; here he sat down, and filled a pipe from
the _Sanitätsknaster_ or Health-tobacco, of which his friend the
Conrector Paulmann had lately made him a present. Close before him
rolled and chafed the gold-dyed waves of the fair Elbe-stream; behind
him rose lordly Dresden, stretching, bold and proud, its light towers
into the airy sky; which again, farther off, bent itself down toward
flowery meads and fresh springing woods; and in the dim distance, a
range of azure peaks gave notice of remote Bohemia. But, heedless of
this, the student Anselmus, looking gloomily before him, blew forth
his smoky clouds into the air. His chagrin at length became audible,
and he said: "Of a truth, I am born to losses and crosses for my life
long! That in boyhood I never could become the King on Twelfthnight,
that at Odds or Evens I could never once guess the right way, that
my bread and butter always fell on the buttered side--of all these
sorrows I will not speak; but is it not a frightful destiny, that now,
when, in spite of Satan, I have become a student, I must still be a
jolthead as before? Do I ever put a new coat on, without the first day
smearing it with tallow, or on some ill-fastened nail or other tearing
a cursed hole in it? Do I ever bow to any Councilor or any lady,
without pitching the hat out of my hands, or even slipping on the
pavement, and shamefully going heels-over-head? Had I not, every
market-day, while in Halle, a regular sum of from three to four
groschen to pay for broken pottery, the Devil putting it into my head
to walk straight forward, like a leming-rat? Have I ever once got to
my college, or any place I was appointed to, at the right time? What
availed it that I set out half an hour before, and planted myself at
the door, with the knocker in my hand? Just as the clock is going to
strike, souse! some Devil pours a wash-basin down on me, or I bolt
against some fellow coming out, and get myself engaged in endless
quarrels till the time is clean gone.
"Ah! well-a-day! whither are ye fled, ye blissful dreams of coming
fortune, when I proudly thought that here I might even reach the
height of Privy Secretary? And has not my evil star estranged from me
my best patrons? I learn, for instance, that the Councilor, to whom I
have a letter, cannot suffer cropped hair; with immensity of trouble,
the barber fastens me a little cue to my hindhead; but at the first
bow his unblessed knot gives way, and a little shock-dog, running
snuffling about me, frisks off to the Privy Councilor with the cue in
his mouth. I spring after it in terror, and stumble against the
table, where he has been working while at breakfast; and cups, plates,
ink-glass, sand-box, rush jingling to the floor, and a flood of
chocolate and ink overflows the "Relation" he has just been writing.
'Is the Devil in the man?' bellows the furious Privy Councilor, and
shoves me out of the room.
"What avails it that Corrector Paulmann gave me hopes of a writership:
will my malignant fate allow it, which everywhere pursues me?
Today even! Do but think of it! I was purposing to hold my good old
Ascension-day with right cheerfulness of soul; I would stretch a point
for once; I might have gone, as well as any other guest, into Linke's
Bath, and called out proudly: 'Marqueur! a bottle of double beer; best
sort, if you please!' I might have sat till far in the evening, and,
moreover, close by this or that fine party of well-dressed ladies. I
know it, I feel it! heart would have come into me and I should have
been quite another man; nay, I might have carried it so far that when
one or other of them asked, `What o'clock may it be?' or 'What is
it they are playing?' I should have started up with light grace, and
without overturning my glass or stumbling over the bench, but in a
curved posture, moving one step and a half forward, I should have
answered: 'Give me leave, Mademoiselle! it is the overture of the
_Donauweibchen_;' or, 'It is just going to strike six.' Could any
mortal in the world have taken it ill of me? No! I say; the girls
would have looked over, smiling so roguishly, as they always do when
I pluck up heart to show them that I too understand the light tone of
society, and know how ladies should be spoken to. But here--the Devil
leads me into that cursed apple-basket, and now must I sit moping
in solitude, with nothing but a poor pipe of----" Here the student
Anselmus was interrupted in his soliloquy by a strange rustling and
whisking, which rose close by him in the grass, but soon glided up
into the twigs and leaves of the elder-tree that stretched out over
his head. It was as if the evening wind were shaking the leaves; as if
little birds were twittering among the branches, moving their little
wings in capricious flutter to and fro. Then he heard a whispering and
lisping; and it seemed as if the blossoms were sounding like
little crystal bells. Anselmus listened and listened. Ere long, the
whispering, and lisping, and tinkling, he himself knew not how, grew
to faint and half-scattered words:
"'Twixt this way, 'twixt that; 'twixt branches, 'twixt blossoms, come
shoot, come twist and twirl we! Sisterkin, sisterkin! up to the shine;
up, down, through and through, quick! Sun-rays yellow; evening-wind
whispering; dew-drops pattering; blossoms all singing: sing we with
branches and blossoms! Stars soon glitter; must down: 'twixt this way,
'twixt that, come shoot, come twist, come twirl we, sisterkin!"
And so it went along, in confused and confusing speech. The student
Anselmus thought: "Well, it is but the evening-wind, which tonight
truly is whispering distinctly enough." But at that moment there
sounded over his head, as it were, a triple harmony of clear crystal
bells: he looked up, and perceived three little snakes, glittering
with green and gold, twisted round the branches, and stretching out
their heads to the evening sun. Then, again, began a whispering and
twittering in the same words as before, and the little snakes went
gliding and caressing up and down through the twigs; and while they
moved so rapidly, it was as if the elder-bush were scattering a
thousand glittering emeralds through the dark leaves.
"It is the evening sun which sports so in the elder-bush," thought the
student Anselmus; but the bells sounded again, and Anselmus observed
that one Snake held out its little head to him. Through all his limbs
there went a shock like electricity; he quivered in his inmost heart;
he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark-blue eyes were looking
at him with unspeakable longing; and an unknown feeling of highest
blessedness and deepest sorrow was like to rend his heart asunder.
And as he looked, and still looked, full of warm desire, into these
charming eyes, the crystal bells sounded louder in harmonious accord,
and the glittering emeralds fell down and encircled him, flickering
round him in thousand sparkles, and sporting in resplendent threads
of gold. The Elder-bush moved and spoke: "Thou layest in my shadow; my
perfume flowed round thee, but thou understoodst me not. The perfume
is my speech, when Love kindles it." The Evening-Wind came gliding
past, and said: "I played round thy temples, but thou understoodst me
not. Breath is my speech, when Love kindles it." The sunbeams broke
through the clouds, and the sheen of it burnt, as in words: "I
overflowed thee with glowing gold, but thou understoodst me not. Glow
is my speech, when Love kindles it."
And, still deeper and deeper sunk in the view of these glorious eyes,
his longing grew keener, his desire more warm. And all rose and moved
around him, as if awakening to joyous life. Flowers and blossoms shed
their odors round him; and their odor was like the lordly singing of
a thousand softest voices; and what they sung was borne, like an
echo, on the golden evening clouds, as they flitted away, into far-off
lands. But as the last sunbeam abruptly sank behind the hills, and
the twilight threw its veil over the scene, there came a hoarse deep
voice, as from a great distance:
"Hey! hey! what chattering and jingling is that up there? Hey! hey!
who catches me the ray behind the hills? Sunned enough, sung enough.
Hey! hey! through bush and grass, through grass and stream! Hey! hey!
Come dow-w-n, dow-w-w-n!"
So faded the voice away, as in murmurs of a distant thunder; but the
crystal bells broke off in sharp discords. All became mute; and
the student Anselmus observed how the three snakes, glittering and
sparkling, glided through the grass toward the river; rustling and
hustling, they rushed into the Elbe; and over the waves where they
vanished, there crackled up a green flame, which, gleaming forward
obliquely, vanished in the direction of the city.
SECOND VIGIL
How the student Anselmus was looked upon as drunk and mad. The
crossing of the Elbe. Bandmaster Graun's Bravura. Conradi's
Stomachic Liqueur, and the bronzed Apple-Woman.
"The gentleman seems not to be in his right wits!" said a respectable
burgher's wife, who, returning from a walk with her family, had paused
here, and, with crossed arms, was looking at the mad pranks of the
student Anselmus. Anselmus had clasped the trunk of the elder-tree,
and was calling incessantly up to the branches and leaves: "O glitter
and shine once more, ye dear gold snakes; let me hear your little
bell-voices once more! Look on me once more, ye kind eyes; O once, or
I must die in pain and ardent longing!" And with this, he was sighing
and sobbing from the bottom of his heart most pitifully, and, in his
eagerness and impatience, shaking the elder-tree to and fro; which,
however, instead of any reply, rustled quite gloomily and inaudibly
with its leaves, and so rather seemed, as it were, to make sport of
the student Anselmus and his sorrows.
"The gentleman seemingly is not in his right wits!" said the burgher's
wife; and Anselmus felt as if you had shaken him out of a deep dream,
or poured ice-cold water on him, that he might awaken without loss
of time. He now first saw clearly where he was and recollected what a
strange apparition had teased him, nay, so beguiled his senses as to
make him break forth into loud talk with himself. In astonishment,
he gazed at the woman; and at last, snatching up his hat, which had
fallen to the ground in his transport, was for making off in all
speed. The burgher himself had come forward in the meanwhile; and,
setting down the child from his arm on the grass, had been leaning on
his staff, and with amazement listening and looking at the student.
He now picked up the pipe and tobacco-pouch which the student had let
fall, and, holding them out to him, said: "Don't take on so dreadfully
in the dark, my worthy sir, or alarm people, when nothing is the
matter, after all, but having taken a sip too much; go home, like a
pretty man, and take a nap of sleep on it."
The student Anselmus felt exceedingly ashamed; he uttered nothing but
a most lamentable Ah!
"Pooh! Pooh!" said the burgher, "never mind it a jot; such a thing
will happen to the best; on good old Ascension-day a man may readily
enough forget himself in his joy, and gulp down a thought too much.
A clergyman himself is no worse for it: I presume, my worthy sir, you
are a _Candidatus_.--But, with your leave, sir, I shall fill my pipe
with your tobacco; mine went out a little while ago."
This last sentence the burgher uttered while the student Anselmus was
about putting up his pipe and pouch; and now the burgher slowly and
deliberately cleaned his pipe, and began as slowly to fill it. Several
burgher girls had come up; they were speaking secretly with the woman
and one another, and tittering as they looked at Anselmus. The student
felt as if he were standing on prickly thorns and burning needles. No
sooner had he recovered his pipe and tobacco-pouch, than he darted off
at the height of his speed.
All the strange things he had seen were clean gone from his memory; he
simply recollected having babbled all manner of foolish stuff beneath
the elder-tree. This was the more shocking to him, as he entertained
from of old an inward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan
that chatters out of them, said his Rector; and Anselmus shared
honestly his belief. To be regarded as a _Candidatus Theologiae_,
overtaken with drink on Ascension-day! The thought was intolerable.
He was just about turning up the Poplar Alley, by the Kosel Garden,
when a voice behind him called out: "Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus!
for the love of Heaven, whither are you running in such haste?" The
student paused, as if rooted to the ground; for he was convinced that
now some new mischance would befall him. The voice rose again: "Herr
Anselmus, come back, then; we are waiting for you here at the water!"
And now the student perceived that it was his friend Conrector
Paulmann's voice; he went back to the Elbe, and found the Conrector,
with his two daughters, as well as Registrator Heerbrand, all on the
point of stepping into their gondola. Conrector Paulmann invited the
student to go with them across the Elbe, and then to pass the evening
at his house in the Pirna suburb. The student Anselmus very gladly
accepted this proposal, thinking thereby to escape the malignant
destiny which had ruled over him all day.
Now, as they were crossing the river, it chanced that, on the farther
bank, near the Anton Garden, fireworks were just going off. Sputtering
and hissing, the rockets went aloft, and their blazing stars flew
to pieces in the air, scattering a thousand vague shoots and flashes
round them. The student Anselmus was sitting by the steersman, sunk in
deep thought; but when he noticed in the water the reflection of
these darting and wavering sparks and flames, he felt as if it was the
little golden snakes that were sporting in the flood. All the strange
things he had seen at the elder-tree again started forth into his
heart and thoughts; and again that unspeakable longing, that glowing
desire, laid hold of him here, which had before agitated his bosom in
painful spasms of rapture.
"Ah! is it you again, my little golden snakes? Sing now, O sing! In
your song let the kind, dear, dark-blue eyes again appear to me.--Ah?
are ye under the waves, then?"
So cried the student Anselmus, and at the same time made a violent
movement, as if he were for plunging from the gondola into the river.
"Is the Devil in you, sir?" exclaimed the steersman, and clutched
him by the coat-tail. The girls, who were sitting by him, shrieked
in terror, and fled to the other side of the gondola. Registrator
Heerbrand whispered something in Conrector Paulmann's ear, to
which the latter answered, but in so low a tone that Anselmus could
distinguish nothing but the words: "Such attacks--never noticed them
before?" Directly after this, Conrector Paulmann also rose, and then
sat down, with a certain earnest, grave, official mien, beside the
student Anselmus, taking his hand, and saying: "How are you, Herr
Anselmus?" The student Anselmus was like to lose his wits, for in his
mind there was a mad distraction, which he strove in vain to soothe.
He now saw plainly that what he had taken for the gleaming of the
golden snakes was nothing but the reflection of the fireworks in
Anton's Garden: but a feeling unexperienced till now, he himself knew
not whether it was rapture or pain, cramped his breast together; and
when the steersman struck through the water with his helm, so that the
waves, curling as in anger, gurgled and chafed, he heard in their din
a soft whispering: "Anselmus! Anselmus! seest thou not how we still
skim along before thee? Sisterkin looks at thee again; believe,
believe, believe in us!" And he thought he saw in the reflected light
three green-glowing streaks; but then, when he gazed, full of fond
sadness, into the water, to see whether these gentle eyes would not
again look up to him, he perceived too well that the shine proceeded
only from the windows in the neighboring houses. He was sitting mute
in his place, and inwardly battling with himself, when Conrector
Paulman repeated, with still greater emphasis: "How are you, Herr
Anselmus?"
With the most rueful tone, Anselmus replied: "Ah! Herr Conrector, if
you knew what strange things I have been dreaming, quite awake,
with open eyes, just now, under an elder-tree at the wall of Linke's
garden, you would not take it amiss of me that I am a little absent,
or so."
"Ey, ey, Herr Anselmus!" interrupted Conrector Paulmann, "I have
always taken you for a solid young man; but to dream, to dream with
your eyes wide open, and then, all at once, to start up for leaping
into the water! This, begging your pardon, is what only fools or
madmen could do."
The student Anselmus was deeply affected at his friend's hard saying;
then Veronica, Paulmann's eldest daughter, a most pretty blooming
girl of sixteen, addressed her father: "But, dear father, something
singular must have befallen Herr Anselmus; and perhaps he only thinks
he was awake, while he may really have been asleep, and so all
manner of wild stuff has come into his head and is still lying in his
thoughts."
"And, dearest Mademoiselle! Worthy Conrector!" interrupted Registrator
Heerbrand, "may one not, even when awake, sometimes sink into a sort
of dreaming state? I myself have had such fits. One afternoon, for
instance, during coffee, in a sort of brown study like this, in the
very moment of corporeal and spiritual digestion, the place where a
lost document was lying occurred to me, as if by inspiration; and last
night, no further gone, there came glorious large Latin WRIT tripping
out before my open eyes, in the very same way."
"Ah! most honored Registrator," answered Conrector Paulmann, "you
have always had a tendency to the _Poetica_; and thus one falls into
fantasies and romantic humors."
The student Anselmus, however, was particularly gratified that in this
most troublous situation, while in danger of being considered drunk or
crazy, any one should take his part; and though it was already fairly
dark, he thought he noticed, for the first time, that Veronica had
really very fine dark-blue eyes, and this too without remembering the
strange pair which he had looked at in the elder-bush. On the whole,
the adventure under the elder-bush had once more entirely vanished
from the thoughts of the student Anselmus; he felt himself at ease and
light of heart; nay, in the capriciousness of joy, he carried it so
far that he offered a helping hand to his fair advocate, Veronica, as
she was stepping from the gondola; and without more ado, as she put
her arm in his, escorted her home with so much dexterity and good luck
that he missed his footing only once, and this being the only wet spot
in the whole road, spattered Veronica's white gown only a very little
by the incident.
Conrector Paulmann failed not to observe this happy change in
the student Anselmus; he resumed his liking for him, and begged
forgiveness for the hard words which he had let fall before. "Yes,"
added he, "we have many examples to show that certain phantasms may
rise before a man and pester and plague him not a little; but this is
bodily disease, and leeches are good for it, if applied to the right
part, as a certain learned physician, now deceased, has directed." The
student Anselmus knew not whether he had been drunk, crazy, or sick;
but at all events the leeches seemed entirely superfluous, as these
supposed phantasms had utterly vanished, and the student himself was
growing happier and happier, the more he prospered in serving the
pretty Veronica with all sorts of dainty attentions.
As usual, after the frugal meal, came music; the student Anselmus had
to take his seat before the harpsichord, and Veronica accompanied
his playing with her pure clear voice. "Dear Mademoiselle," said
Registrator Heerbrand, "you have a voice like a crystal bell!"
"That she has not!" ejaculated the student Anselmus, he scarcely
knew how. "Crystal bells in elder-trees sound strangely, strangely!"
continued the student Anselmus, murmuring half aloud.
Veronica laid her hand on his shoulder, and asked: "What are you
saying now, Herr Anselmus?"
Instantly Anselmus recovered his cheerfulness, and began playing.
Conrector Paulmann gave a grim look at him; but Registrator Heerbrand
laid a music-leaf on the frame, and sang with ravishing grace one
of Bandmaster Graun's bravura airs. The student Anselmus accompanied
this, and much more; and a fantasy duet, which Veronica and he now
fingered, and Conrector Paulmann had himself composed, again brought
all into the gayest humor.
It was now quite late, and Registrator Heerbrand was taking up his hat
and stick, when Conrector Paulmann went up to him with a mysterious
air, and said: "Hem!--Would not you, honored Registrator, mention to
the good Herr Anselmus himself--Hem! what we were speaking of before?"
"With all the pleasure in nature," said Registrator Heerbrand; and
after all were seated in a circle, he began, without farther preamble,
as follows:
"In this city is an old, strange, remarkable man; people say he
follows all manner of secret sciences; but as there are no such
sciences, I rather take him for an antiquary, and, along with
this, for an experimental chemist. I mean no other than our Privy
Archivarius Lindhorst. He lives, as you know, by himself, in his old
sequestered house; and when disengaged from his office he is to
be found in his library, or in his chemical laboratory, to which,
however, he admits no stranger. Besides many curious books, he
possesses a number of manuscripts, partly Arabic, Coptic, and some of
them in strange characters which belong not to any known tongue. These
he wishes to have copied properly; and for this purpose he requires
a man who can draw with the pen, and so transfer these marks to
parchment, in Indian ink, with the highest strictness and fidelity.
The work is carried on in a separate chamber of his house, under his
own oversight; and besides free board during the time of business, he
pays his man a specie-dollar, daily, and promises a handsome present
when the copying is rightly finished. The hours of work are from
twelve to six. From three to four, you take rest and dinner.
"Herr Archivarius Lindhorst having in vain tried one or two young
people for copying these manuscripts, has at last applied to me to
find him an expert drawer; and so I have been thinking of you,
dear Herr Anselmus, for I know that you both write very neatly, and
likewise draw with the pen to great perfection. Now, if in these bad
times, and till your future establishment, you would like to earn a
speziesthaler in the day, and this present over and above, you can go
tomorrow precisely at noon, and call upon the Archivarius, whose house
no doubt you know. But be on your guard against any blot! If such a
thing falls on your copy, you must begin it again; if it falls on the
original, the Archivarius will think nothing of throwing you out of
the window, for he is a hot-tempered gentleman."
The student Anselmus was filled with joy at Registrator Heerbrand's
proposal; for not only could the student write well and draw well
with the pen, but this copying with laborious calligraphic pains was
a thing he delighted in beyond aught else. So he thanked his patron in
the most grateful terms, and promised not to fail at noon tomorrow.
All night the student Anselmus saw nothing but clear speziesthalers,
and heard nothing but their lovely clink. Who could blame the poor
youth, cheated of so many hopes by capricious destiny, obliged to take
counsel about every farthing, and to forego so many joys which a young
heart requires! Early in the morning he brought out his black-lead
pencils, his crow-quills, his Indian ink; for better materials,
thought he, the Archivarius can find nowhere. Above all, he mustered
and arranged his calligraphic masterpieces and his drawings, to show
them to the Archivarius, in proof of his ability to do what he wished.
All prospered with the student; a peculiar happy star seemed to be
presiding over him; his neckcloth sat right at the very first trial;
no tack burst; no loop gave way in his black silk stockings; his hat
did not once fall to the dust after he had trimmed it. In a word,
precisely at half-past eleven, the student Anselmus, in his pike-gray
frock, and black satin lower habiliments, with a roll of calligraphics
and pen-drawings in his pocket, was standing in the Schlossgasse, in
Conradi's shop, and drinking one--two glasses of the best stomachic
liqueur; for here, thought he, slapping on the still empty pocket, for
here speziesthalers will be clinking soon.
Notwithstanding the distance of the solitary street where the
Archivarius Lindhorst's very ancient residence lay, the student
Anselmus was at the front door before the stroke of twelve. He stood
here, and was looking at the large fine bronze knocker; but now when,
as the last stroke tingled through the air with loud clang from the
steeple-clock of the Kreuzkirche, he lifted his hand to grasp this
same knocker, the metal visage twisted itself, with horrid rolling
of its blue-gleaming eyes, into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the
Apple-woman of the Black Gate! The pointed teeth gnashed together in
the loose jaws, and in their chattering through the skinny lips
there was a growl of: "Thou fool, fool, fool!--Wait, wait!--Why
didst run!--Fool!" Horror-struck, the student Anselmus flew back;
he clutched at the door-post, but his hand caught the bell-rope and
pulled it, and in piercing discords it rung stronger and stronger, and
through the whole empty house the echo repeated, as in mockery: "To
the crystal fall!" An unearthly terror seized the student Anselmus,
and quivered through all his limbs. The bell-rope lengthened downward,
and became a white, transparent, gigantic serpent, which encircled and
crushed him, and girded him straiter and straiter in its coils, till
his brittle, paralyzed limbs went crashing in pieces, and the blood
spouted from his veins, penetrating into the transparent body of the
serpent, and dyeing it red. "Kill me! Kill me!" he would have cried,
in his horrible agony; but the cry was only a stifled gurgle in his
throat. The serpent lifted its head, and laid its long peaked tongue
of glowing brass on the breast of Anselmus; then a fierce pang
suddenly cut asunder the artery of life, and thought fled away
from him. On returning to his senses, he was lying on his own poor
truckle-bed; Conrector Paulmann was standing before him, and saying:
"For Heaven's sake, what mad stuff is this, dear Herr Anselmus?"
SIXTH VIGIL
Archivarius Lindhorst's Garden, with some Mocking birds. The Golden
Pot. English current-hand. Pot-hooks. The Prince of the Spirits.
"It may be, after all," said the student Anselmus to himself, "that
the superfine, strong, stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely
at Monsieur Conradi's, might really be the cause of all these shocking
phantasms which so tortured me at Archivarius Lindhorst's door.
Therefore, I will go quite sober today, and so bid defiance to
whatever further mischief may assail me." On this occasion, as before,
when equipping himself for his first call on Archivarius Lindhorst,
the student Anselmus put his pen-drawings and calligraphic
masterpieces, his bars of Indian ink, and his well-pointed crow-pens,
into his pockets; and was just turning to go out, when his eye lighted
on the vial with the yellow liqueur, which he had received from
Archivarius Lindhorst. All the strange adventures he had met with
again rose on his mind in glowing colors; and a nameless emotion
of rapture and pain thrilled through his breast. Involuntarily he
exclaimed, with a most piteous voice: "Ah, am I not going to
the Archivarius solely for a sight of thee, thou gentle lovely
Serpentina!" At that moment he felt as if Serpentina's love might be
the prize of some laborious perilous task which he had to undertake,
and as if this task were no other than the copying of the Lindhorst
manuscripts. That at his very entrance into the house, or, more
properly, before his entrance, all manner of mysterious things might
happen, as of late, was no more than he anticipated. He thought no
more of Conradi's strong water, but hastily put the vial of liqueur
in his waistcoat-pocket that he might act strictly by the Archivarius'
directions, should the bronzed Apple-woman again take it upon her to
make faces at him.
And did not the hawk-nose actually peak itself, did not the cat-eyes
actually glare from the knocker, as he raised his hand to it, at the
stroke of twelve? But now, without further ceremony, he dribbled his
liqueur into the pestilent visage; and it folded and molded itself,
that instant, down to a glittering bowl-round knocker. The door went
up; the bells sounded beautifully over all the house: "Klingling,
youngling, in, in, spring, spring, klingling." In good heart he
mounted the fine broad stair and feasted on the odors of some strange
perfumery that was floating through the house. In doubt, he paused on
the lobby; for he knew not at which of these many fine doors he was to
knock. But Archivarius Lindhorst, in a white damask nightgown, stepped
forth to him, and said: "Well, it is a real pleasure to me, Herr
Anselmus, that you have kept your word at last. Come this way, if you
please; I must take you straight into the Laboratory;" and with this
he stepped rapidly through the lobby, and opened a little side-door
which led into a long passage. Anselmus walked on in high spirits,
behind the Archivarius; they passed from this corridor into a hall,
or rather into a lordly green-house: for on both sides, up to the
ceiling, stood all manner of rare wondrous flowers, nay, great trees
with strangely-formed leaves and blossoms. A magic dazzling light
shone over the whole, though you could not discover whence it came,
for no window whatever was to be seen. As the student Anselmus looked
in through the bushes and trees, long avenues appeared to open
in remote distance. In the deep shade of thick cypress groves lay
glittering marble fountains, out of which rose wondrous figures,
spouting crystal jets that fell with pattering spray into gleaming
lily-cups; strange voices cooed and rustled through the wood of
curious trees; and sweetest perfumes streamed up and down.
The Archivarius had vanished, and Anselmus saw nothing but a huge bush
of glowing fire-lilies before him. Intoxicated with the sight and the
fine odors of this fairy-garden, Anselmus stood fixed to the spot.
Then began on all sides of him a giggling and laughing; and light
little voices railed and mocked him: "Herr Studiosus! Herr Studiosus!
Where are you coming from? Why are you dressed so bravely, Herr
Anselmus? Will you chat with us for a minute, how grandmammy sat
squatting down upon the egg, and young master got a stain on his
Sunday waistcoat?--Can you play the new tune, now, which you learned
from Daddy Cocka-doodle, Herr Anselmus?--You look very fine in your
glass periwig, and post-paper boots." So cried and chattered and
sniggered the little voices, out of every corner, nay, close by the
student himself, who but now observed that all sorts of party-colored
birds were fluttering above him and jeering him in hearty laughter.
At that moment the bush of fire-lilies advanced toward him; and he
perceived that it was Archivarius Lindhorst, whose flowered nightgown,
glittering in red and yellow, had so far deceived his eyes.
"I beg your pardon, worthy Herr Anselmus," said the Archivarius, "for
leaving you alone; I wished, in passing, to take a peep at my fine
cactus, which is to blossom tonight. But how like you my little
house-garden?"
"Ah, Heaven! Immeasurably pretty it is, most valued Herr Archivarius,"
replied the student; "but those party-colored birds have been
bantering me a little."
"What wishy-washy is this?" cried the Archivarius angrily into the
bushes. Then a huge gray parrot came fluttering out, and perched
itself beside the Archivarius on a myrtle-bough; and looking at him
with an uncommon earnestness and gravity through a pair of spectacles
that stuck on his hooked bill, it shrilled out: "Don't take it amiss,
Herr Archivarius; my wild boys have been a little free or so; but the
Herr Studiosus has himself to blame in the matter, for----"
"Hush! hush!" interrupted Archivarius Lindhorst; "I know the varlets;
but thou must keep them in better discipline, my friend!--Now, come
along, Herr Anselmus."
And the Archivarius again stepped forth, through many a
strangely-decorated chamber; so that the student Anselmus, in
following him, could scarcely give a glance at all the glittering
wondrous furniture, and other unknown things, with which the whole of
them were filled. At last they entered a large apartment, where the
Archivarius, casting his eyes aloft, stood still; and Anselmus
got time to feast himself on the glorious sight which the simple
decoration of this hall afforded. Jutting from the azure-colored walls
rose gold-bronze trunks of high palm-trees, which wove their colossal
leaves, glittering like bright emeralds, into a ceiling far up; in the
middle of the chamber, and resting on three Egyptian lions, cast
out of dark bronze, lay a porphyry plate; and on this stood a simple
Golden Pot, from which, so soon as he beheld it, Anselmus could not
turn away an eye. It was as if, in a thousand gleaming reflections,
all sorts of shapes were sporting on the bright polished gold; often
he perceived his own form, with arms stretched out in longing--ah!
beneath the elder-bush--and Serpentina was winding and shooting up and
down, and again looking at him with her kind eyes. Anselmus was beside
himself with frantic rapture.
"Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried he aloud; and Archivarius Lindhorst
whirled round abruptly, and said: "How now, worthy Herr Anselmus? If
I mistake not, you were pleased to call for my daughter; she is way
in the other side of the house at present, and indeed just taking her
lesson on the harpsichord. Let us go over."
Anselmus, scarcely knowing what he did, followed his conductor; he saw
or heard nothing more, till Archivarius Lindhorst suddenly grasped his
hand, and said: "Here is the place!" Anselmus awoke as from a dream,
and now perceived that he was in a high room, all lined on every side
with book-shelves, and nowise differing from a common library and
study. In the middle stood a large writing-table, with a stuffed
arm-chair before it. "This," said Archivarius Lindhorst, "is your
work-room for the present: whether you may work, some other time, in
the blue library, also where you so suddenly called out my daughter's
name, I yet know not. But now I could wish to convince myself of your
ability to execute this task appointed to you, in the way I wish it
and need it." The student here gathered full courage; and not without
internal self-complacence in the certainty of highly gratifying
Archivarius Lindhorst through his extraordinary talents, pulled out
his drawings and specimens of penmanship from his pocket. But no
sooner had the Archivarius cast his eye on the first leaf, a piece of
writing in the finest English style, than he smiled very oddly, and
shook his head. These motions he repeated at every following leaf, so
that the student Anselmus felt the blood mounting to his face; and at
last, when the smile became quite sarcastic and contemptuous, he
broke out in downright vexation: "The Herr Archivarius does not seem
contented with my poor talents."
"Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius Lindhorst, "you have indeed
fine capacities for the art of calligraphy; but, in the meanwhile, it
is clear enough, I must reckon more on your diligence and good-will
than on your capacity."
The student Anselmus spoke largely of his often-acknowledged
perfection in this art, of his fine Chinese ink, and most select
crow-quills. But Archivarius Lindhorst handed him the English sheet,
and said: "Be judge yourself!" Anselmus felt as if struck by a
thunderbolt, to see his handwriting look so: it was miserable, beyond
measure. There was no rounding in the turns, no hair-stroke where it
should be; no proportion between the capital and single letters; nay,
villainous school-boy pot-hooks often spoiled the best lines. "And
then," continued Archivarius Lindhorst, "your ink will not stand." He
dipped his finger in a glass of water, and as he just skimmed it over
the lines they vanished without vestige. The student Anselmus felt as
if some monster were throttling him; he could not utter a word. There
stood he with the unlucky sheet in his hand; but Archivarius Lindhorst
laughed aloud, and said: "Never mind it, dearest Herr Anselmus; what
you could not accomplish before, will perhaps do better here. At any
rate, you shall have better materials than you have been accustomed
to. Begin, in Heaven's name!"
From a locked press Archivarius Lindhorst now brought out a black
fluid substance, which diffused a most peculiar odor; also pens,
sharply pointed and of strange color, together with a sheet of
especial whiteness and smoothness; then at last an Arabic manuscript;
and as Anselmus sat down to work, the Archivarius left the room. The
student Anselmus had often before copied Arabic manuscripts; the first
problem, therefore, seemed to him not so very difficult to solve. "How
these pot-hooks came into my fine English current-hand, Heaven and
Archivarius Lindhorst know best," said he; "but that they are not from
_my_ hand, I will testify to the death!" At every new word that stood
fair and perfect on the parchment, his courage increased, and with it
his adroitness. In truth, these pens wrote exquisitely well; and the
mysterious ink flowed pliantly and black as jet, on the bright white
parchment. And as he worked along so diligently and with such strained
attention, he began to feel more and more at home in the solitary
room; and already he had quite fitted himself into his task, which he
now hoped to finish well, when at the stroke of three the Archivarius
called him into the side-room to a savory dinner. At table,
Archivarius Lindhorst was in special gaiety of heart; he inquired
about the student Anselmus' friends, Conrector Paulmann, and
Registrator Heerbrand, and of the latter especially he had a store
of merry anecdotes to tell. The good old Rhenish was particularly
grateful to the student Anselmus, and made him more talkative than he
was wont to be. At the stroke of four he rose to resume his labor; and
this punctuality appeared to please the Archivarius.
If the copying of these Arabic manuscripts had prospered in his hands
before dinner, the task now went forward much better; nay, he could
not himself comprehend the rapidity and ease with which he succeeded
in transcribing the twisted strokes of this foreign character. But
it was as if, in his inmost soul, a voice were whispering in audible
words: "Ah! couldst thou accomplish it wert thou not thinking of
_her_, didst thou not believe in _her_ and in her love?" Then there
floated whispers, as in low, low, waving crystal tones, through the
room: "I am near, near, near! I help thee; be bold, be steadfast, dear
Anselmus! I toil with thee, that thou mayest be mine!" And as, in
the fulness of secret rapture, he caught these sounds, the unknown
characters grew clearer and clearer to him; he scarcely required
to look on the original at all; nay, it was as if the letters were
already standing in pale ink on the parchment, and he had nothing more
to do than mark them black. So did he labor on, encompassed with dear,
consoling tones as with soft, sweet breath, till the clock struck six,
and Archivarius Lindhorst entered the room. He came forward to
the table, with a singular smile; Anselmus rose in silence; the
Archivarius still looked at him, with that mocking smile; but no
sooner had he glanced over the copy than the smile passed into deep,
solemn earnestness, which every feature of his face adapted itself to
express. He seemed no longer the same. His eyes, which usually gleamed
with sparkling fire, now looked with unutterable mildness at Anselmus;
a soft red tinted the pale cheeks; and instead of the irony which at
other times compressed the mouth, the softly-curved, graceful lips now
seemed to be opening for wise and soul-persuading speech. The whole
form was higher, statelier; the wide nightgown spread itself like a
royal mantle in broad folds over his breast and shoulders; and through
the white locks, which lay on his high open brow, there was wound a
thin band of gold.
"Young man," began the Archivarius in solemn tone, "before thou
thoughtest of it, I knew thee, and all the secret relations which
bind thee to the dearest and holiest I have on earth! Serpentina loves
thee; a singular destiny, whose fateful threads were spun by hostile
powers, is fulfilled should she be thine and thou obtain, as an
essential dowry, the Golden Pot, which of right belongs to her. But
only from effort and contest can thy happiness in the higher life
arise; hostile Principles assail thee; and only the interior force
with which thou shalt withstand these assaults can save thee from
disgrace and ruin. Whilst laboring here thou art passing your
apprenticeship; belief and full knowledge will lead thee to the near
goal, if thou but hold fast what thou hast well begun. Bear _her_
always and truly in thy thoughts, her who loves thee; then shalt thou
see the marvels of the Golden Pot, and be happy forevermore. Fare
thee well! Archivarius Lindhorst expects thee tomorrow at noon in
thy cabinet. Fare thee well!" With these words Archivarius Lindhorst
softly pushed the student Anselmus out of the door, which he then
locked; and Anselmus found himself in the chamber where he had dined,
the single door of which led out to the lobby.
Altogether stupified with these strange phenomena, the student
Anselmus stood lingering at the street-door; he heard a window open
above him, and looked up: it was Archivarius Lindhorst, quite the
old man again, in his light-gray gown, as he usually appeared. The
Archivarius called to him: "Hey, worthy Herr Anselmus, what are
you studying over there? Tush, the Arabic is still in your head.
My compliments to Herr Conrector Paulmann, if you see him; and come
tomorrow precisely at noon. The fee for this day is lying in your
right waistcoat-pocket." The student Anselmus actually found the clear
speziesthaler in the pocket indicated; but he took no joy in it. "What
is to come of all this," said he to himself, "I know not; but if it
be some mad delusion and conjuring work that has laid hold of me, the
dear Serpentina still lives and moves in my inward heart, and rather
than leave her I will perish altogether; for I know that the thought
in me is eternal, and no hostile Principle can take it from me; and
what else is this thought but Serpentina's love?"
EIGHTH VIGIL
The Library of the Palm-trees. Fortunes of an unhappy Salamander.
How the Black Quill caressed a Parsnip, and Registrator Heerbrand
was much overcome with Liqueur.
The student Anselmus had now worked several days with Archivarius
Lindhorst; these working hours were for him the happiest of his life;
ever encircled with the lovely tone of Serpentina's encouraging words,
he was filled and overflowed with a pure delight, which often rose
to highest rapture. Every strait, every little care of his needy
existence, had vanished from his thoughts; and in the new life which
had risen on him as in serene sunny splendor, he comprehended all
the wonders of a higher world, which before had filled him with
astonishment, nay, with dread. His copying proceeded rapidly and
lightly, for he felt more and more as if he were writing characters
long known to him; and he scarcely needed to cast his eye upon the
manuscript, while copying it all with the greatest exactness.
Except at the hour of dinner, Archivarius Lindhorst seldom made his
appearance, and this always precisely at the moment when Anselmus
had finished the last letter of some manuscript; then the Archivarius
would hand him another, and, directly after, leave him without
uttering a word, having first stirred the ink with a little black rod
and changed the old pens with new sharp-pointed ones. One day, when
Anselmus, at the stroke of twelve, had as usual mounted the stairs, he
found the door through which he commonly entered, standing locked; and
Archivarius Lindhorst came forward from the other side, dressed in his
strange flower-figured nightgown. He called aloud: "Today come this
way, dear Anselmus; for we must to the chamber where Bhogovotgita's
masters are waiting for us."
He stepped along the corridor, and led Anselmus through the same
chambers and halls as at the first visit. The student Anselmus again
felt astonished at the marvelous beauty of the garden; but he now
perceived that many of the strange flowers, hanging on the dark
bushes, were in truth insects gleaming with lordly colors, hovering
up and down with their little wings as they danced and whirled in
clusters, caressing one another with their antennae. On the other hand
again, the rose and azure-colored birds were odoriferous flowers;
and the perfume which they scattered mounted from their cups in low,
lovely tones, which, with the gurgling of distant fountains, and the
sighing of the high shrubs and trees, melted into mysterious harmonies
of a deep unutterable longing. The mocking-birds, which had so jeered
and flouted him before, were again fluttering to and fro over his
head and crying incessantly with their sharp, small voices: "Herr
Studiosus, Herr Studiosus, don't be in such a hurry! Don't peep into
the clouds so! You may fall on your nose--He, he! Herr Studiosus, put
your powder-mantle on; cousin Screech-Owl will frizzle your toupee."
And so it went along, in all manner of stupid chatter, till Anselmus
left the garden.
Archivarius Lindhorst at last stepped into the azure chamber; the
porphyry, with the Golden Pot, was gone; instead of it, in the middle
of the room, stood a table overhung with violet-colored satin, upon
which lay the writing-materials already known to Anselmus; and a
stuffed arm-chair, covered with the same sort of cloth, was placed
before it.
"Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius Lindhorst, "you have now copied
me a number of manuscripts, rapidly and correctly, to my no small
contentment: you have gained my confidence; but the hardest is yet to
come; and that is the transcribing or rather painting of certain works
after the original, composed of peculiar signs; I keep them in this
room, and they can be copied only on the spot. You will, therefore, in
future, work here; but I must recommend to you the greatest foresight
and attention; a false stroke, or, which may Heaven forefend, a blot
let fall on the original, will plunge you into misfortune."
Anselmus observed that from the golden trunks of the palm-trees,
little emerald leaves projected: one of these leaves the Archivarius
took hold of; and Anselmus could not but perceive that the leaf was in
truth a roll of parchment, which the Archivarius unfolded and spread
out before the student on the table. Anselmus wondered not a little
at these strangely intertwisted characters; and as he looked over
the many points, strokes, dashes, and twirls in the manuscript, which
seemed to represent either plants or mosses or animal figures, he
almost lost hope of ever copying it. He fell into deep thought on the
subject.
"Be of courage, young man!" cried the Archivarius; "if thou hast
sterling faith and true love, Serpentina will help thee."
His voice sounded like ringing metal; and as Anselmus looked up in
utter terror, Archivarius Lindhorst was standing before him in the
kingly form, which, during the first visit, he had assumed in the
library. Anselmus felt as if in his deep reverence he could not
but sink on his knee; but the Archivarius stepped up the trunk of a
palm-tree, and vanished aloft among the emerald leaves. The student
Anselmus understood that the Prince of the Spirits had been speaking
with him, and was now gone up to his study; perhaps intending to
advise with the beams which some of the planets had dispatched to him
as envoys, on what was to become of Anselmus and Serpentina.
"It may be too," thought he further, "that he is expecting news from
the Springs of the Nile; or that some magician from Lapland is paying
him a visit; me it behooves to set diligently about my task." And
with this, he began studying the foreign characters in the roll of
parchment.
The strange music of the garden sounded over to him and encircled him
with sweet lovely odors; the mocking-birds too he still heard chirping
and twittering, but could not distinguish their words--a thing which
greatly pleased him. At times also it was as if the emerald leaves of
the palm-trees were rustling, and as if the clear crystal tones, which
Anselmus on that fateful Ascension-day had heard under the elder-bush,
were beaming and flitting through the room. Wonderfully strengthened
by this shining and tinkling, the student Anselmus directed his eyes
and thoughts more and more intensely on the superscription of the
parchment roll; and ere long he felt, as it were from his inmost soul,
that the characters could denote nothing else than these words: _Of
the marriage of the Salamander with the green Snake_. Then resounded
a louder triphony of clear crystal bells; "Anselmus! dear Anselmus!"
floated to him from the leaves; and, O wonder! on the trunk of the
palm-tree the green Snake came winding down.
"Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried Anselmus, in the madness of highest
rapture; for as he gazed more earnestly, it was in truth a lovely,
glorious maiden that, looking at him with those dark-blue eyes, full
of inexpressible longing, as they lived in his heart, was hovering
down to meet him. The leaves seemed to jut out and expand; on every
hand were prickles sprouting from the trunks; but Serpentina twisted
and wound herself deftly through them; and so drew her fluttering
robe, framing her as if in changeful colors, along with her, that,
playing round the dainty form, it nowhere caught on the projecting
points and prickles of the palm-trees. She sat down by Anselmus on the
same chair, clasping him with her arm, and pressing him toward her,
so that he felt the breath which came from her lips, and the electric
warmth of her frame.
"Dear Anselmus!" began Serpentina, "thou shalt now soon be wholly
mine; by thy faith, by thy Love thou shalt obtain me, and I will bring
thee the Golden Pot, which shall make us both happy forevermore."
"O thou kind, lovely Serpentina!" said Anselmus. "If I have but thee,
what care I for all else! If thou art but mine, I will joyfully give
in to all the wondrous mysteries that have beset me ever since the
moment when I first saw thee."
"I know," continued Serpentina, "that the strange and mysterious
things with which my father, often merely in the sport of his humor,
has surrounded thee, have raised horror and dread in thy mind; but
now, I hope, it shall be so no more; for I came now only to tell thee,
dear Anselmus, from the bottom of my heart and soul, all and sundry to
a tittle that thou needest to know for understanding my father, and so
learn the real condition of both of us."
Anselmus felt as if he were so wholly clasped and encircled by the
gentle, lovely form, that only with her could he move and stir, and
as if it were but the beating of her pulse that throbbed through
his nerves and fibres; he listened to each one of her words which
penetrated his inmost heart, and, like a burning ray, kindled in him
the rapture of Heaven. He had put his arm round that daintier than
dainty waist; but the changeful glistering cloth of her robe was
so smooth and slippery that it seemed to him as if she could at any
moment wind herself from his arms, and glide away. He trembled at the
thought.
"Ah, do not leave me, sweet Serpentina!" cried he involuntarily; "thou
alone art my life."
"Not now," said Serpentina, "till I have told thee all that in thy
love of me thou canst comprehend."
"Know then, dearest, that my father is sprung from the wondrous race
of the Salamanders; and that I owe my existence to his love for the
green Snake. In primeval times, in the Fairyland Atlantis, the potent
Spirit-prince Phosphorus bore rule; and to him the Salamanders, and
other Spirits of the Elements, were plighted. Once on a time, the
Salamander, whom he loved before all others (it was my father),
chanced to be walking in the stately garden, which Phosphorus' mother
had decked in the lordliest fashion with her best gifts; and the
Salamander heard a tall Lily singing in low tones: `Press down thy
little eyelids, till my Lover, the Morning-wind, awake thee.' He
stepped toward it: touched by his glowing breath, the Lily opened her
leaves; and he saw the Lily's daughter, the green Snake, lying asleep
in the hollow of the flower. Then was the Salamander inflamed with
warm love for the fair Snake; and he carried her away from the Lily,
whose perfumes in nameless lamentation vainly called for her beloved
daughter throughout all the garden. For the Salamander had borne her
into the palace of Phosphorus, and was there beseeching him: 'Wed me
with my beloved, for she shall be mine forevermore.' 'Madman, what
askest thou!' said the Prince of the Spirits; 'know that once the Lily
was my mistress, and bore rule with me; but the Spark, which I cast
into her, threatened to annihilate the fair Lily; and only my victory
over the black Dragon, whom now the Spirits of the Earth hold in
fetters, maintains her, that her leaves continue strong enough to
inclose this Spark and preserve it within them. But when thou claspest
the green Snake, thy fire will consume her frame; and a new Being,
rapidly arising from her dust, will soar away and leave thee.'
"The Salamander heeded not the warning of the Spirit-prince: full of
longing ardor he folded the green Snake in his arms; she crumbled into
ashes; a winged Being, born from her dust, soared away through the
sky. Then the madness of desperation caught the Salamander, and he ran
through the garden, throwing forth fire and flames, and wasted it
in his wild fury, till its fairest flowers and blossoms hung down,
blackened and scathed, and their lamentation filled the air. The
indignant Prince of the Spirits, in his wrath, laid hold of the
Salamander, and said: 'Thy fire has burnt out, thy flames are
extinguished, thy rays darkened; sink down to the Spirits of the
Earth; let these mock and jeer thee, and keep thee captive, till the
Fire-element shall again kindle and beam up with thee as with a new
being from the Earth.' The poor Salamander sank down extinguished;
but now the testy old Earth-spirit, who was Phosphorus' gardener,
came forth and said: 'Master! who has greater cause to complain of the
Salamander than I? Had not all the fair flowers, which he has burnt,
been decorated with my gayest metals; had I not stoutly nursed and
tended their seeds, and spent many a fair hue on their leaves? And yet
I must pity the poor Salamander; for it was but love, in which thou, O
Master, hast full often been entangled, that drove him to despair
and made him desolate the garden. Remit him the too harsh
punishment!'--'His fire is for the present extinguished,' said the
Prince of the Spirits; 'but in the hapless time, when the Speech of
Nature shall no longer be intelligible to degenerate man; when the
Spirits of the Elements, banished into their own regions, shall speak
to him only from afar, in faint, spent echoes; when, displaced from
the harmonious circle, an infinite longing alone shall give him
tidings of the Land of Marvels, which he once might inhabit while
Faith and Love still dwelt in his soul--in this hapless time the fire
of the Salamander shall again kindle; but only to manhood shall he
be permitted to rise, and, entering wholly into man's necessitous
existence, he shall learn to endure its wants and oppressions. Yet not
only shall the remembrance of his first state continue with him, but
he shall again rise into the sacred harmony of all Nature; he shall
understand its wonders, and the power of his fellow-spirits shall
stand at his behest. Then, too, in a Lily-bush, shall he find the
green Snake again, and the fruit of his marriage with her shall be
three daughters, which, to men, shall appear in the form of their
mother. In the spring season these shall disport them in the dark
Elder-bush, and sound with their lovely crystal voices. And then if,
in that needy and mean age of inward obduracy, there shall be found
a youth who understands their song; nay, if one of the little Snakes
look at him with her kind eyes; if the look awaken in him forecastings
of the distant, wondrous Land, to which, having cast away the burden
of the Common, he can courageously soar; if, with love to the Snake,
there rise in him belief in the Wonders of Nature, nay, in his own
existence amid these Wonders--then the Snake shall be his. But not
till three youths of this sort have been found and wedded to the three
daughters, may the Salamander cast away his heavy burden, and return
to his brothers.'--'Permit me, Master,' said the Earth-spirit, 'to
make these three daughters a present, which may glorify their life
with the husbands they shall find. Let each of them receive from me
a Pot, of the fairest metal which I have; I will polish it with
beams borrowed from the diamond; in its glitter shall our Kingdom
of Wonders, as it now exists in the Harmony of universal Nature, be
mirrored in glorious dazzling reflection; and from its interior, on
the day of marriage, shall spring forth a Fire-lily, whose eternal
blossom shall encircle the youth that is found worthy, with sweet
wafting odors. Soon too shall he learn its speech, and understand
the wonders of our kingdom, and dwell with his beloved in Atlantis
itself.'
"Thou perceivest well, dear Anselmus, that the Salamander of whom I
speak is no other than my father. Spite of his higher nature, he was
forced to subject himself to the paltriest afflictions of common life;
and hence, indeed, often comes the mischievous humor with which he
vexes many. He has told me now and then, that, for the inward make of
mind, which the Spirit-prince Phosphorus required as a condition of
marriage with me and my sisters, men have a name at present, which,
in truth, they frequently enough misapply: they call it a childlike
poetic mind. This mind, he says, is often found in youths, who, by
reason of their high simplicity of manners and their total want of
what is called knowledge of the world, are mocked by the populace. Ah,
dear Anselmus, beneath the Elder-bush thou understoodest my song, my
look; thou lovest the green Snake, thou believest in me, and wilt be
mine forevermore! The fair Lily will bloom forth from the Golden
Pot; and we shall dwell, happy, and united, and blessed, in Atlantis
together!
"Yet I must not hide from thee that in its deadly battle with the
Salamanders and Spirits of the Earth, the black Dragon burst from
their grasp and hurried off through the air. Phosphorus, indeed,
again holds him in fetters; but from the black Quills, which, in the
struggle, rained down on the ground, there sprung up hostile Spirits,
which on all hands set themselves against the Salamanders and Spirits
of the Earth. That woman who so hates thee, dear Anselmus, and who,
as my father knows full well, is striving for possession of the
Golden Pot; that woman owes her existence to the love of such a Quill
(plucked in battle from the Dragon's wing) for a certain Parsnip
beside which it dropped. She knows her origin and her power; for, in
the moans and convulsions of the captive Dragon, the secrets of many a
mysterious constellation are revealed to her; and she uses every means
and effort to work from the Outward into the Inward and unseen; while
my father, with the beams which shoot forth from the spirit of the
Salamander, withstands and subdues her. All the baneful principles
which lurk in deadly herbs and poisonous beasts, she collects; and,
mixing them under favorable constellations, raises therewith many
a wicked spell, which overwhelms the soul of man with fear and
trembling, and subjects him to the power of those Demons, produced
from the Dragon when it yielded in battle. Beware of that old woman,
dear Anselmus! She hates thee because thy childlike, pious character
has annihilated many of her wicked charms. Keep true, true to me; soon
art thou at the goal!"
"O my Serpentina! my own Serpentina!" cried the student Anselmus, "how
could I leave thee, how should I not love thee forever!" A kiss was
burning on his lips; he awoke as from a deep dream; Serpentina had
vanished; six o'clock was striking, and it fell heavy on his heart
that today he had not copied a single stroke. Full of anxiety, and
dreading reproaches from the Archivarius, he looked into the sheet;
and, O wonder! the copy of the mysterious manuscript was fairly
concluded; and he thought, on viewing the characters more narrowly,
that the writing was nothing else but Serpentina's story of her
father, the favorite of the Spirit-prince Phosphorus, in Atlantis,
the Land of Marvels. And now entered Archivarius Lindhorst, in his
light-gray surtout, with hat and staff; he looked into the parchment
on which Anselmus had been writing, took a large pinch of snuff, and
said with a smile "Just as I thought!--Well, Herr Anselmus, here is
your speziesthaler; we will now to the Linke Bath; do but follow me!"
The Archivarius stepped rapidly through the garden, in which there was
such a din of singing, whistling, talking, that the student Anselmus
was quite deafened with it and thanked Heaven when he found himself on
the street.
Scarcely had they walked a few paces when they met Registrator
Heerbrand, who companionably joined them. At the Gate, they filled
their pipes, which they had about them; Registrator Heerbrand
complained that he had left his tinder-box behind, and could not
strike fire. "Fire!" cried Archivarius Lindhorst, scornfully; "here is
fire enough, and to spare!" And with this he snapped his fingers, out
of which came streams of sparks and directly kindled the pipes.--"Do
but observe the chemical knack of some men!" said Registrator
Heerbrand; but the student Anselmus thought, not without internal awe,
of the Salamander and his history.
In the Linke Bath, Registrator Heerbrand drank so much strong double
beer that at last, though usually a good-natured, quiet man, he began
singing student songs in squeaking tenor; he asked every one sharply
whether he was his friend or not; and at last had to be taken home by
the student Anselmus, long after Archivarius had gone his way.
NINTH VIGIL
How the student Anselmus attained to some Sense. The Punch Parts.
How the student Anselmus took Conrector Paulmann for a Screech-Owl,
and the latter felt much hurt at it. The Ink-blot, and its
Consequences.
The strange and mysterious things which day by day befell the student
Anselmus had entirely withdrawn him from every-day life. He no longer
visited any of his friends, and waited every morning with impatience
for the hour of noon, which was to unlock his paradise. And yet while
his whole soul was turned to the sweet Serpentina and the wonders of
Archivarius Lindhorst's fairy kingdom, he could not help now and then
thinking of Veronica; nay, often it seemed as if she came before him
and confessed with blushes how heartily she loved him, how much
she longed to rescue him from the phantoms which were mocking and
befooling him. At times he felt as if a foreign power, suddenly
breaking in on his mind, were drawing him with resistless force to the
forgotten Veronica; as if he must needs follow her whither she pleased
to lead him, nay, as if he were bound to her by ties that would not
break. That very night after Serpentina had first appeared to him
in the form of a lovely maiden, after the wondrous secret of the
Salamander's nuptials with the green Snake had been disclosed,
Veronica, came before him more vividly than ever. Nay, not till he
awoke was he clearly aware that he had been but dreaming; for he had
felt persuaded that Veronica was actually beside him, complaining with
an expression of keen sorrow, which pierced through his inmost soul,
that he should sacrifice her deep, true love to fantastic visions,
which only the distemper of his mind called into being, and which,
moreover, would at last prove his ruin. Veronica was lovelier than he
had ever seen her; he could not drive her from his thoughts: and in
this perplexed and contradictory mood he hastened out, hoping to get
rid of it by a morning walk.
A secret magic influence led him on to the Pirna gate; he was just
turning into a cross street, when Conrector Paulmann, coming after
him, cried out: "Ey! Ey!--Dear Herr Anselmus!--_Amice! Amice_! Where,
in Heaven's name, have you been buried so long? We never see you at
all. Do you know, Veronica is longing very much to have another song
with you! So come along; you were just on the road to me, at any
rate."
The student Anselmus, constrained by this friendly violence, went
along with the Conrector. On entering the house they were met by
Veronica, attired with such neatness and attention that Conrector
Paulmann, full of amazement, asked her: "Why so decked, Mam'sell? Were
you expecting visitors? Well, here I bring you Herr Anselmus." The
student Anselmus, in daintily and elegantly kissing Veronica's hand
felt a small soft pressure from it, which shot like a stream of fire
over all his frame. Veronica was cheerfulness, was grace itself; and
when Paulmann left them for his study, she contrived, by all manner of
rogueries and waggeries, so to uplift the student Anselmus that he at
last quite forgot his bashfulness, and jigged round the room with the
light-headed maiden. But here again the Demon of Awkwardness got hold
of him; he jolted a table, and Veronica's pretty little work-box fell
to the floor. Anselmus picked it up; the lid had sprung, and a little
round metallic mirror was glittering on him, into which he looked with
peculiar delight. Veronica glided softly up to him, laid her hand on
his arm, and, pressing close to him, looked over his shoulder into the
mirror also. And now Anselmus felt as if a battle were beginning
in his soul; thoughts, images flashed out--Archivarius
Lindhorst--Serpentina--the green Snake--at last the tumult abated, and
all this chaos arranged and shaped itself into distinct consciousness.
It was now clear to him that he had always thought of Veronica alone;
nay, that the form which had yesterday appeared to him in the blue
chamber had been no other than Veronica; and that the wild legend of
the Salamander's marriage with the green Snake had merely been written
down by him from the manuscript, but nowise related in his hearing. He
wondered not a little at all these dreams and ascribed them solely to
the heated state of mind into which Veronica's love had brought him,
as well as to his working with Archivarius Lindhorst, in whose rooms
there were, besides, so many strangely intoxicating odors. He could
not but laugh heartily at the mad whim of falling in love with a
little green Snake and taking a well-fed Privy Archivarius for a
Salamander: "Yes, Yes! It is Veronica!" cried he aloud; but on turning
his head around he looked right into Veronica's blue eyes, from which
warmest love was beaming. A faint soft Ah! escaped her lips, which at
that moment were burning on his.
"O happy I!" sighed the enraptured student: "What I yesternight but
dreamed, is in very deed mine today."
"But wilt thou really wed me, then, when thou art Hofrat?" said
Veronica.
"That I will," replied the student Anselmus; and just then the door
creaked, and Conrector Paulmann entered with the words:
"Now, dear Herr Anselmus, I will not let you go today. You will put up
with a bad dinner; then Veronica will make us delightful coffee, which
we shall drink with Registrator Heerbrand, for he promised to come
hither."
"All, best Herr Conrector!" answered the student Anselmus, "are you
not aware that I must go to Archivarius Lindhorst's and copy?"
"Look you, Amice!" said Conrector Paulmann, holding up his watch,
which pointed to half-past twelve.
The student Anselmus saw clearly that he was much too late for
Archivarius Lindhorst; and he complied with the Corrector's wishes the
more readily as he might now hope to look at Veronica the whole day
long, to obtain many a stolen glance and little squeeze of the hand,
nay, even to succeed in conquering a kiss--so high had the student
Anselmus' desires now mounted; he felt more and more contented in
soul, the more fully he convinced himself that he should soon be
delivered from all the fantastic imaginations, which really might have
made a sheer idiot of him.
Registrator Heerbrand came, as he had promised, after dinner; and
coffee being over, and the dusk come on, the Registrator, his face
puckering up to a smile and gaily rubbing his hands, signified that he
had something about him which, if mingled and reduced to form, as it
were paged and titled, by Veronica's fair hands, might be pleasant to
them all, on this October evening.
"Come out, then, with this mysterious substance which you carry
with, you, most valued Registrator," cried Conrector Paulmann. Then
Registrator Heerbrand shoved his hand into his deep pocket, and at
three journeys brought out a bottle of arrack, some citrons, and a
quantity of sugar. Before half an hour had passed, a savory bowl of
punch was smoking on Paulmann's table. Veronica served the beverage;
and ere long there was plenty of gay, good-natured chat among the
friends. But the student Anselmus, as the spirit of the punch mounted
into his head, felt all the images of those wondrous things, which for
some time he had experienced, again coming through his mind. He
saw the Archivarius in his damask nightgown, which glittered like
phosphorus; he saw the azure room, the golden palm-trees; nay, it now
seemed to him as if he must still believe in Serpentina; there was a
fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul. Veronica handed him
a glass of punch; and in taking it, he gently touched her hand.
"Serpentina! Veronica!" sighed he to himself. He sank into deep
dreams; but Registrator Heerbrand cried quite aloud: "A strange old
gentleman, whom nobody can fathom, he is and will be, this Archivarius
Lindhorst. Well, long life to him! Your glass, Herr Anselmus!"
Then the student Anselmus awoke from his dreams, and said, as he
touched glasses with Registrator Heerbrand "That proceeds, respected
Herr Registrator, from the circumstance that Archivarius Lindhorst
is in reality a Salamander, who wasted in his fury the Spirit-prince
Phosphorus' garden, because the green Snake had flown away from him."
"How? What?" inquired Conrector Paulmann.
"Yes," continued the student Anselmus; "and for this reason he is now
forced to be a Royal Archivarius, and to keep house here in Dresden
with his three daughters, who, after all, are nothing more than little
gold-green Snakes, that bask in elder-bushes, and traitorously sing,
and seduce away young people, like so many sirens."
"Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus!" cried Conrector Paulmann, "is there
a crack in your brain? In Heaven's name, what monstrous stuff is this
you are babbling?"
"He is right," interrupted Registrator Heerbrand; "that fellow, that
Archivarius, is a cursed Salamander, and strikes you fiery snips from
his fingers, which burn holes in your surtout like red-hot tinder. Ay,
ay, thou art in the right, brotherkin Anselmus; and whoever says No,
is saying No to me!" And at these words Registrator Heerbrand struck
the table with his fist, till the glasses rattled.
"Registrator! Are you crazy?" cried the angry Conrector. "Herr
Studiosus, Herr Studiosus! What is this you are about again?"
"Ah!" said the student, "you too are nothing but a bird, a
screech-owl, that frizzles toupees, Herr Conrector!" "What!--I
a bird?--screech-owl, a frizzler?" cried the Conrector, full of
indignation; "Sir, you are mad, born mad!"
"But the crone will get a clutch of him," cried Registrator Heerbrand.
"Yes, the crone is potent," interrupted the student Anselmus, "though
she is but of mean descent; for her father was nothing but a ragged
wing-feather, and her mother a dirty parsnip; but the most of her
power she owes to all sorts of baneful creatures, poisonous vermin
which she keeps about her."
"That is a horrid calumny," cried Veronica, with eyes all glowing in
anger; "old Liese is a wise woman; and the black Cat is no baneful
creature, but a polished young gentleman of elegant manners, and her
cousin german."
"Can _he_ eat Salamanders without singeing his whiskers, and dying
like a candle-snuff?" cried Registrator Heerbrand.
"No! no!" shouted the student Anselmus, "that he never can in this
world; and the green Snake loves me, for I have a childlike mien, and
I have looked into Serpentina's eyes."
"The Cat will scratch them out," cried Veronica.
"Salamander, Salamander masters them all, all!" hallooed Conrector
Paulmann, in the highest fury. "But am I in a madhouse? Am I mad
myself? What crazy stuff am I chattering? Yes, I am mad too! mad too!"
And with this, Conrector Paulmann started up, tore the peruke from his
head and dashed it against the ceiling of the room, till the battered
locks whizzed, and, tangled into utter disorder, rained down the
powder far and wide. Then the student Anselmus and Registrator
Heerbrand seized the punch-bowl and the glasses, and, hallooing and
huzzaing, pitched them against the ceiling also, and the sherds fell
jingling and tingling about their ears.
"_Vivat_ the Salamander!--_Pereat, pereat_ the crone!--Break the
metal mirror!--Dig the cat's eyes out!--Bird, little Bird, from the
air--_Eheu--Eheu--Evoe--Evoe_, Salamander!" So shrieked and shouted
and bellowed the three, like utter maniacs. With loud weeping,
Fränzchen ran out; but Veronica lay whimpering for pain and sorrow on
the sofa.
At this moment the door opened; all was instantly still; and a little
man, in a small gray cloak, came stepping in. His countenance had
a singular air of gravity; and especially the round hooked nose, on
which was a huge pair of spectacles, distinguished itself from all the
noses ever seen. He wore a strange peruke too--more like a feather-cap
than a wig.
"Ey, many good evenings!" grated and cackled the little comical
mannikin. "Is the student Herr Anselmus among you, gentlemen?--Best
compliments from Archivarius Lindhorst; he has waited today in vain
for Herr Anselmus; but tomorrow he begs most respectfully to request
that Herr Anselmus would not forget the hour."
And with this he went out again; and all of them now saw clearly
that the grave little mannikin was in fact a gray Parrot. Conrector
Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand raised a horse-laugh, which
reverberated through the room, and, in the intervals, Veronica was
moaning and whimpering, as if torn by nameless sorrow; but as to the
student Anselmus, the madness of inward horror was darting through
him, and unconsciously he ran out of the door, into the street.
Instinctively he reached his house, his garret. Ere long Veronica came
in to him, with a peaceful and friendly look, and asked him why, in
his intoxication, he had so alarmed her; and desired him to be on
his guard against new imaginations, while working at Archivarius
Lindhorst's. "Good night, good night, my beloved friend!" whispered
Veronica, scarce audibly, and breathed a kiss on his lips. He
stretched out his arms to clasp her, but the dreamy shape had
vanished, and he awoke cheerful and refreshed. He could not but laugh
heartily at the effects of the punch; but in thinking of Veronica, he
felt pervaded by a most delightful feeling. "To her alone," said he
within himself, "do I owe this return from my insane whims. In good
sooth, I was little better than the man who believed himself to be of
glass; or he who durst not leave his room for fear the hens should eat
him, as he imagined himself to be a barleycorn. But as soon as I am
Hofrat I will marry Mademoiselle Paulmann and be happy, and there's an
end of it."
At noon, as he walked through Archivarius Lindhorst's garden, he
could not help wondering how all this had once appeared so strange and
marvelous to him. He now saw nothing but common, earthen flowerpots,
quantities of geraniums, myrtles, and the like. Instead of the
glittering party-colored birds which used to flout him, there were
only a few sparrows fluttering hither and thither, which raised an
unpleasant, unintelligible cry at sight of Anselmus. The azure room
also had quite a different look; and he could not understand how that
glaring blue, and those unnatural golden trunks of palm-trees, with
their shapeless glistening leaves, should ever have pleased him for a
moment. The Archivarius looked at him with a most peculiar, ironical
smile, and asked: "Well, how did you like the punch last night, good
Anselmus?"
"Ah, doubtless you have heard from the gray Parrot how--" answered the
student Anselmus, quite ashamed; but he stopped short, bethinking him
that this appearance of the Parrot was all a piece of jugglery of the
confused senses.
"I was there myself," said Archivarius Lindhorst; "did you not see me?
But, among the mad pranks you were playing, I had nigh got lamed; for
I was sitting in the punch-bowl, at the very moment when Registrator
Heerbrand laid hands on it, to dash it against the ceiling; and I had
to make a quick retreat into the Conrector's pipehead. Now, adieu,
Herr Anselmus! Be diligent at your task; for the lost day also you
shall have a speziesthaler, because you worked so well before."
"How can the Archivarius babble such mad stuff?" thought the student
Anselmus, sitting down at the table to begin the copying of the
manuscript, which Archivarius Lindhorst had as usual spread out before
him. But on the parchment roll he perceived so many strange crabbed
strokes and twirls all twisted together in inexplicable confusion,
offering no resting-point for the eye, that it seemed to him well-nigh
impossible to copy all this exactly. Nay, in glancing over the whole,
you might have thought the parchment was nothing but a piece of
thickly veined marble, or a stone sprinkled over with lichens.
Nevertheless he determined to do his utmost, and boldly dipped in
his pen; but the ink would not run, do what he would; impatiently
he spirted the point of his pen against his nail, and--Heaven and
Earth!--a huge blot fell on the out-spread original! Hissing and
foaming, a blue flash rose from the blot, and, crackling and wavering,
shot through the room to the ceiling. Then a thick vapor rolled from
the walls; the leaves began to rustle, as if shaken by a tempest; and
down out of them darted glaring basilisks in sparkling fire; these
kindled the vapor, and the bickering masses of flame rolled round
Anselmus. The golden trunks of the palm-trees became gigantic snakes,
which knocked their frightful heads together with piercing metallic
clang and wound their scaly bodies round Anselmus.
"Madman I suffer now the punishment of what, in insolent sacrilege,
thou hast done!" So cried the frightful voice of the crowned
Salamander, who appeared above the snakes like a glittering beam in
the midst of the flame; and now the yawning jaws of the snakes poured
forth cataracts of fire on Anselmus; and it was as if the fire-streams
were congealing about his body and changing into a firm ice-cold
mass. But while Anselmus' limbs, more and more pressed together and
contracted, stiffened into powerlessness, his senses passed away.
On returning to himself, he could not stir a joint; he was as if
surrounded with a glistening brightness, on which he struck if he but
tried to lift his hand or move otherwise.--Alas! He was sitting in a
well-corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the library of Archivarius
Lindhorst.
TENTH VIGIL
Sorrows of the student Anselmus in the Glass Bottle. Happy Life of
the Cross Church Scholars and Law Clerks. The Battle in the Library
of Archivarius Lindhorst. Victory of the Salamander, and Deliverance
of the student Anselmus.
Justly may I doubt whether thou, kind reader, wert ever sealed up in
a glass bottle; or even that any vivid tormenting dream ever oppressed
thee with such a demon from fairyland. If such were the case, thou
wouldst keenly enough figure out the poor student Anselmus' woe; but
shouldst thou never have even dreamed such things, then will thy quick
fancy, for Anselmus' sake and mine, be obliging enough to inclose
itself for a few moments in the crystal. Thou art drowned in dazzling
splendor; all objects about thee appear illuminated and begirt with
beaming rainbow hues; all quivers and wavers, and clangs and drones,
in the sheen; thou art floating motionless as in a firmly congealed
ether, which so presses thee together that the spirit in vain gives
orders to the dead and stiffened body. Weightier and weightier the
mountain burden lies on thee; more and more does every breath exhaust
the little handful of air, that still plays up and down in the narrow
space; thy pulse throbs madly; and, cut through with horrid anguish,
every nerve is quivering and bleeding in this deadly agony. Have
pity, kind reader, on the student Anselmus of whom this inexpressible
torture laid hold in his glass prison; but he felt too well that death
could not relieve him; for did he not awake from the deep swoon
into which the excess of pain had cast him, and open his eyes to new
wretchedness, when the morning sun shone clear into the room? He could
move no limb; but his thoughts struck against the glass, stupefying
him with discordant clang; and instead of the words, which the spirit
used to speak from within him, he now heard only the stifled din of
madness. Then he exclaimed in his despair "O Serpentina! Serpentina!
save me from this agony of Hell!" And it was as if faint sighs
breathed around him, which spread like green transparent elder-leaves
over the glass; the clanging ceased; the dazzling, perplexing glitter
was gone, and he breathed more freely.
"Have not I myself solely to blame for my misery? Ah! Have not I
sinned against thee, thou kind, beloved Serpentina? Have not I raised
vile doubts of thee? Have not I lost my faith, and, with it, all,
all that was to make me so blessed? Ah! Thou wilt now never, never
be mine; for me the Golden Pot is lost, and I shall not behold its
wonders any more. Ah, but once could I see thee, but once hear thy
gentle sweet voice, thou lovely Serpentina!"
So wailed the student Anselmus, caught with deep piercing sorrow; then
spoke a voice close by him: "What the devil ails you Herr Studiosus?
What makes you lament so, out of all compass and measure?"
The student Anselmus now noticed that on the same shelf with him were
five other bottles, in which he perceived three Cross Church Scholars,
and two Law Clerks.
"Ah, gentlemen, my fellows in misery," cried he, "how is it possible
for you to be so calm, nay so happy, as I read in your cheerful looks?
You are sitting here corked up in glass bottles, as well as I, and
cannot move a finger, nay, not think a reasonable thought but there
rises such a murder-tumult of clanging and droning and in your head
itself a tumbling and rumbling enough to drive one mad. But doubtless
you do not believe in the Salamander, or the green Snake."
"You are pleased to jest, Mein Herr Studiosus," replied a Cross Church
Scholar; "we have never been better off than at present; for the
speziesthalers which the mad Archivarius gave us for all manner of
pot-hook copies, are clinking in our pockets; we have now no Italian
choruses to learn by heart; we go every day to Joseph's or other inns,
where we do justice to the double-beer, we even look pretty girls in
their faces; and we sing, like real students, _Gaudeamus igitur_, and
are contented in spirit!"
"The gentlemen are quite right," added a Law Clerk; "I too am well
furnished with speziesthalers, like my dearest colleague beside me
here; and we now diligently walk about on the Weinberg, instead of
scurvy Act-writing within four walls."
"But, my best, worthiest gentlemen!" said the student Anselmus, "do
you not feel, then, that you are all and sundry corked up in glass
bottles, and cannot for your hearts walk a hair's-breadth?"
Here the Cross Church Scholars and the Law Clerks set up a loud laugh,
and cried: "The student is mad; he fancies himself to be sitting in
a glass bottle, and is standing on the Elbe-bridge and looking right
down into the water. Let us go along!"
"Ah!" sighed the student, "they have never seen the sweet Serpentina;
they know not what Freedom, and life in Love, and Faith, signify;
and so by reason of their folly and low-mindedness, they feel not
the oppression of the imprisonment into which the Salamander has cast
them. But I, unhappy I, must perish in want and woe, if she, whom I so
inexpressibly love, do not deliver me!"
Then, waving in faint tinkles, Serpentina's voice flitted through
the room: "Anselmus! believe, love, hope!" And every tone beamed
into Anselmus' prison; and the crystal yielded to his pressure, and
expanded, till the breast of the captive could move and heave.
The torment of his situation became less and less, and he saw clearly
that Serpentina still loved him, and that it was she alone, who
had rendered his confinement in the crystal tolerable. He disturbed
himself no more about his frivolous companions in misfortune, but
directed all his thoughts and meditations on the gentle Serpentina.
Suddenly, however, there arose on the other side a dull, croaking,
repulsive murmur. Ere long he could observe that it proceeded from an
old coffee-pot, with half-broken lid, standing over against him on a
little shelf. As he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly features of
a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded themselves; and in a few
moments, the Apple-wife of the Black Gate stood before him. She
grinned and laughed at him, and cried with screeching voice: "Ey, Ey,
my pretty boy, must thou lie in limbo now? To the crystal thou hast
run; did I not tell thee long ago?"
"Mock and jeer me; do, thou cursed witch!" said the student Anselmus.
"Thou art to blame for it all; but the Salamander will catch thee,
thou vile Parsnip!"
"Ho, ho!" replied the crone, "not so proud, good ready-writer! Thou
hast smashed my little sons to pieces, thou hast burnt my nose; but I
must still like thee, thou knave, for once thou wert a pretty fellow;
and my little daughter likes thee too. Out of the crystal thou wilt
never come unless I help thee; up thither I cannot clamber; but my
cousin gossip the Rat, that lives close above thee, will gnaw in two
the shelf on which thou standest; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch
thee in my apron, that thy nose be not broken, or thy fine sleek face
at all injured; then I will carry thee to Mam'sell Veronica, and thou
shalt marry her when thou art Hofrat."
"Avaunt, thou devil's brood!" cried the student Anselmus, full of
fury; "it was thou alone and thy hellish arts that brought me to the
sin which I must now expiate. But I bear it all patiently; for only
here can I be, where the kind Serpentina encircles me with love and
consolation. Hear it, thou beldam, and despair! I bid defiance to
thy power; I love Serpentina, and none but her forever; I will not
be Hofrat, will not look at Veronica, who by thy means entices me
to evil. Can the green Snake not be mine, I will die in sorrow and
longing. Take thyself away, thou vile rook! Take thyself away!"
The crone laughed till the chamber rung: "Sit and die then," cried
she, "but now it is time to set to work; for I have other trade to
follow here." She threw off her black cloak, and so stood in hideous
nakedness; then she ran round in circles, and large folios came
tumbling down to her; out of these she tore parchment leaves, and,
rapidly patching them together in artful combination and fixing
them on her body, in a few instants she was dressed as if in strange
party-colored scale harness. Spitting fire, the black Cat darted out
of the ink-glass, which was standing on the table, and ran mewing
toward the crone, who shrieked in loud triumph and along with him
vanished through the door.
Anselmus observed that she went toward the azure chamber, and directly
he heard a hissing and storming in the distance; the birds in the
garden were crying; the Parrot creaked out: "Help! help! Thieves!
thieves!" That moment the crone returned with a bound into the room,
carrying the Golden Pot on her arm, and, with hideous gestures,
shrieking wildly through the air; "Joy! joy, little son!--Kill the
green Snake! To her, son! To her!"
Anselmus thought he heard a deep moaning, heard Serpentina's voice.
Then horror and despair took hold of him; he gathered all his force,
he dashed violently, as if nerve and artery were bursting, against the
crystal; a piercing clang went through the room, and the Archivarius
in his bright damask nightgown was standing in the door.
"Hey, hey! vermin!--Mad spell!--Witchwork!--Hither, holla!" So shouted
he; then the black hair of the crone started up like bristles; her
red eyes glanced with infernal fire, and clenching together the peaked
fangs of her ample jaws, she hissed: "Hiss, at him! Hiss, at him!
Hiss!" and laughed and haw-hawed in scorn and mockery, and pressed
the Golden Pot firmly toward her, and threw out of it handfuls of
glittering earth on the Archivarius; but as it touched the nightgown
the earth changed into flowers, which rained down on the ground.
Then the lilies of the nightgown flickered and flamed up; and the
Archivarius caught these lilies blazing in sparky fire and dashed them
on the witch; she howled for agony, but still as she leapt aloft and
shook her harness of parchment the lilies went out and fell away into
ashes.
"To her, my lad!" creaked the crone; then the black Cat darted through
the air, and plunged over the Archivarius' head toward the door; but
the gray Parrot fluttered out against him and caught him with his
crooked bill by the nape, till red fiery blood burst down over his
neck; and Serpentina's voice cried: "Saved! Saved!" Then the crone,
foaming with rage and desperation, darted out upon the Archivarius;
she threw the Golden Pot behind her, and holding up the long talons of
her skinny fists, was for clutching the Archivarius by the throat; but
he instantly doffed his nightgown, and hurled it against her. Then,
hissing, and sputtering, and bursting, shot blue flames from the
parchment leaves, and the crone rolled round in howling agony, and
strove to get fresh earth from the Pot, fresh parchment leaves from
the books, that she might stifle the blazing flames; and whenever any
earth or leaves came down on her the flames went out. But now, as
if coming from the interior of the Archivarius, there issued fiery
crackling beams, and darted on the crone.
"Hey, hey! To it again! Salamander! Victory!" clanged the Archivarius'
voice through the chamber; and a hundred bolts whirled forth in fiery
circles round the shrieking crone. Whizzing and buzzing flew Cat
and Parrot in their furious battle; but at last the Parrot, with
his strong wing, dashed the Cat to the ground; and with his talons
transfixing and holding fast his adversary, which, in deadly agony,
uttered horrid mews and howls, he, with his sharp bill, picked out
his glowing eyes, and the burning froth spouted from them. Then thick
vapor streamed up from the spot where the crone, hurled to the ground,
was lying under the nightgown; her howling, her terrific, piercing cry
of lamentation died away in the remote distance. The smoke, which had
spread abroad with irresistible smell, cleared off; the Archivarius
picked up his nightgown, and under it lay an ugly Parsnip.
"Honored Herr Archivarius, here, let me offer you the vanquished foe,"
said the Parrot, holding out a black hair in his beak to Archivarius
Lindhorst.
"Very well, my worthy friend," replied the Archivarius; "here lies
my vanquished foe too; be so good now as to manage what remains. This
very day, as a small douceur, you shall have six cocoanuts, and a new
pair of spectacles also, for I see the Cat has villainously broken
your glasses.
"Yours forever, most honored friend and patron!" answered the Parrot,
much delighted; then took the Parsnip in his bill, and fluttered out
with it by the window which Archivarius Lindhorst had opened for him.
The Archivarius now lifted the Golden Pot, and cried, with a strong
voice, "Serpentina! Serpentina!" But as the student Anselmus, joying
in the destruction of the vile beldam who had hurried him into
misfortune, cast his eyes on the Archivarius, behold, here stood once
more the high majestic form of the Spirit-prince, looking up to
him with indescribable dignity and grace. "Anselmus," said the
Spirit-prince, "not thou, but a hostile Principle, which strove
destructively to penetrate into thy nature and divide thee
against thyself, was to blame for thy unbelief. Thou hast kept thy
faithfulness; be free and happy." A bright flash quivered through the
spirit of Anselmus; the royal triphony of the crystal bells sounded
stronger and louder than he had ever heard it; his nerves and fibres
thrilled; but, swelling higher and higher, the melodious tones rang
through the room; the glass which inclosed Anselmus broke; and he
rushed into the arms of his dear and gentle Serpentina.
ELEVENTH VIGIL
Conrector Paulmann's anger at the madness which had broken out in
his Family. How Registrator Heerbrand became Hofrat; and, in the
keenest Frost, walked about in Shoes and silk Stockings. Veronica's
Confessions. Betrothment over the steaming Soup-dish.
"But tell me, best Registrator, how the cursed punch last night could
so mount into our heads, and drive us to all manner of _allotria_?"
So said Conrector Paulmann, as he next morning entered his room,
which still lay full of broken sherds, and in whose midst his hapless
peruke, dissolved into its original elements, was floating in the
punch-bowl. After the student Anselmus ran out of doors, Conrector
Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand had still kept trotting and
hobbling up and down the room, shouting like maniacs, and butting
their heads together; till Fränzchen, with much labor, carried her
vertiginous papa to bed, and Registrator Heerbrand, in the deepest
exhaustion, sank on the sofa, which Veronica had left, taking refuge
in her bedroom. Registrator Heerbrand had his blue handkerchief tied
about his head; he looked quite pale and melancholic, and moaned out:
"Ah, worthy Conrector, not the punch which Mam'sell Veronica most
admirably brewed, no! but simply that cursed student is to blame for
all the mischief. Do you not observe that he has long been _mente
caphis_? And are you not aware that madness is infectious? One fool
makes twenty; pardon me, it is an old proverb; especially when you
have drunk a glass or two, you fall into madness quite readily, and
then involuntarily you manoeuvre, and go through your exercise, just
as the crack-brained fugleman makes the motion. Would you believe it,
Conrector? I am still giddy when I think of that gray Parrot!"
"Gray fiddlesticks!" interrupted the Conrector; "it was nothing but
Archivarius Lindhorst's little old Famulus, who had thrown a gray
cloak over him and was seeking the student Anselmus."
"It may be," answered Registrator Heerbrand, "but, I must confess, I
am quite downcast in spirit; the whole night through there was such a
piping and organing."
"That was I," said the Conrector, "for I snore loud."
"Well, maybe," answered the Registrator; "but Conrector, Conrector!
Ah, not without cause did I wish to raise some cheerfulness among
us last night--But that Anselmus has spoiled all! You know not--O
Conrector, Conrector!" And with this, Registrator Heerbrand started
up, plucked the cloth from his head, embraced the Conrector, warmly
pressed his hand, and again cried, in quite heart-breaking tones: "O
Conrector, Conrector!" and, snatching his hat and staff, rushed out of
doors.
"This Anselmus comes not over my threshold again," said Conrector
Paulmann; "for I see very well that, with this obdurate madness of
his, he robs the best people of their senses. The Registrator is
now over with it too; I have hitherto kept safe; but the Devil, who
knocked hard last night in our carousal, may get in at last and play
his tricks with me. So _Apage, Satanas_! Off with thee, Anselmus!"
Veronica had grown quite pensive; she spoke no word; only smiled now
and then very oddly, and liked best to be alone. "Also of her distress
Anselmus is the cause," said the Conrector, full of malice; "but it
is well that he does not show himself here; I know he fears me, this
Anselmus, and so he never comes."
These concluding words Conrector Paulmann spoke aloud; then the tears
rushed into Veronica's eyes, and she said, sobbing: "Ah! how can
Anselmus come? He has long been corked up in the glass bottle."
"How? What?" cried Conrector Paulmann. "Ah Heaven! Ah Heaven! she is
doting too, like the Registrator; the loud fit will soon come!
Ah, thou cursed, abominable, thrice-cursed Anselmus!" He ran forth
directly to Doctor Eckstein, who smiled, and again said: "Ey! Ey!"
This time, however, he prescribed nothing; but added, to the little
he had uttered, the following words, as he walked away: "Nerves! Come
round of itself. Take the air; walks; amusements; theatre; playing
_Sonntagskind, Schwestern von Prag_. Come round of itself."
"So eloquent I have seldom seen the Doctor," thought Conrector
Paulmann; "really talkative, I declare!"
Several days and weeks and months were gone; Anselmus had vanished;
but Registrator Heerbrand also did not make his appearance--not till
the fourth of February, when the Registrator, in a new fashionable
coat of the finest cloth, in shoes and silk stockings, notwithstanding
the keen frost, and with a large nosegay of fresh flowers in his hand,
did enter precisely at noon into the parlor of Conrector Paulmann, who
wondered not a little to see his friend so dizened. With a solemn air,
Registrator Heerbrand stepped forward to Conrector Paulmann; embraced
him with the finest elegance, and then said: "Now at last, on the
Saint's-day of your beloved and most honored Mam'sell Veronica, I will
tell you out, straightforward, what I have long had lying at my heart.
That evening, that unfortunate evening, when I put the ingredients of
that cursed punch in my pocket, I purposed imparting to you a piece of
good news, and celebrating the happy day in convivial joys. Already I
had learned that I was to be made Hofrat, for which promotion I have
now the patent, _cum nomine et sigillo Principis_, in my pocket."
"Ah! Herr Registr--Herr Hofrat Heerbrand, I meant to say," stammered
the Conrector.
"But it is you, most honored Conrector," continued the new Hofrat; "it
is you alone that can complete my happiness. For a long time I have in
secret loved your daughter, Mam'sell Veronica; and I can boast of many
a kind look which she has given me, evidently showing that she would
not cast me away. In one word, honored Conrector! I, Hofrat Heerbrand,
do now entreat of you the hand of your most amiable Mam'sell Veronica,
whom I, if you have nothing against it, purpose shortly to take home
as my wife."
Conrector Paulmann, full of astonishment, clapped his hands
repeatedly, crying: "Ey, Ey, Ey! Herr Registr--Herr Hofrat, I meant
to say--who would have thought it? Well, if Veronica does really
love you, I for my share cannot object; nay, perhaps, her present
melancholy is nothing but concealed love for you, most honored Hofrat!
You know what freaks they have!"
At this moment Veronica entered, pale and agitated as she now commonly
was. Then Hofrat Heerbrand stepped toward her; mentioned in a neat
speech her Saint's-day and handed her the odorous nosegay, along
with a little packet; out of which, when she opened it, a pair of
glittering ear-rings beamed up at her. A rapid flying blush tinted her
cheeks; her eyes sparkled in joy, and she cried: "O Heaven! These are
the very ear-rings which I wore some weeks ago, and thought so much
of."
"How can this be, dearest Mam'sell," interrupted Hofrat Heerbrand,
somewhat alarmed and hurt, "when I bought these jewels not an hour ago
in the Schlossgasse, for current money?"
But Veronica heeded him not; she was standing before the mirror to
witness the effect of the trinkets, which she had already suspended
in her pretty little ears. Conrector Paulmann disclosed to her, with
grave countenance and solemn tone, his friend Heerbrand's preferment
and present proposal. Veronica looked at the Hofrat with a searching
look, and said: "I have long known that you wished to marry me. Well,
be it so! I promise you my heart and hand; but I must now unfold to
you, to both of you, I mean, my father and my bridegroom, much that
is lying heavy on my heart; yes, even now, though the soup should get
cold, which I see Fränzchen is just putting on the table."
Without waiting for the Conrector's or the Hofrat's reply, though the
words were visibly hovering on the lips of both, Veronica continued:
"You may believe me, best father, I loved Anselmus from my heart, and
when Registrator Heerbrand, who is now become Hofrat himself, assured
us that Anselmus might probably reach that position, I resolved that
he and no other should be my husband. But then it seemed as if alien
hostile beings were for snatching him away from me; I had recourse to
old Liese, who was once my nurse, but is now a wise woman, and a great
enchantress. She promised to help me and give Anselmus wholly into
my hands. We went at midnight on the Equinox to the crossing of the
roads; she conjured certain hellish spirits, and by aid of the black
Cat we manufactured a little metallic mirror, in which I, directing my
thoughts on Anselmus, had but to look in order to rule him wholly in
heart and mind. But now I heartily repent having done all this, and
here abjure all Satanic arts. The Salamander has conquered old Liese;
I heard her shrieks; but there was no help to be given; so soon as the
Parrot had eaten the Parsnip my metallic mirror broke in two with a
piercing clang." Veronica took out both the pieces of the mirror,
and a lock of hair from her work-box, and handing them to Hofrat
Heerbrand, she proceeded: "Here, take the fragments of the mirror,
dear Hofrat; throw them down, tonight, at twelve o'clock, over the
Elbe-bridge, from the place where the Cross stands; the stream is not
frozen there; the lock, however, do you wear on your faithful breast.
I again abjure all magic; and heartily wish Anselmus joy of his
good fortune, seeing he is wedded with the green Snake, who is
much prettier and richer than I. You, dear Hofrat, I will love and
reverence as becomes a true honest wife."
"Alack! Alack!" cried Conrector Paulmann, full of sorrow; "she is
cracked, she is cracked; she can never be Frau Hofrätin; she is
cracked!"
"Not in the least," interrupted Hofrat Heerbrand; "I know well that
Mam'sell Veronica has felt kindly toward the loutish Anselmus; and it
may be that in some fit of passion, she has had recourse to the wise
woman, who, as I perceive, can be no other than the card-caster and
coffee-pourer of the Seetor--in a word, old Rauerin. Nor can it be
denied that there are secret arts, which exert their influence on
men but too balefully; we read of such in the Ancients, and doubtless
there are still such; but as to what Mam'sell Veronica is pleased to
say about the victory of the Salamander, and the marriage of Anselmus
with the green Snake, this, in reality, I take for nothing but a
poetic allegory; a sort of poem, wherein she sings her entire farewell
to the Student."
"Take it for what you will, best Hofrat!" cried Veronica; "perhaps for
a very stupid dream."
"That I nowise do," replied Hofrat Heerbrand; "for I know well that
Anselmus himself is possessed by secret powers, which vex him and
drive him on to all imaginable mad freaks."
Conrector Paulmann could stand it no longer; he broke loose: "Hold!
For the love of Heaven, hold! Are we again overtaken with the cursed
punch, or has Anselmus' madness come over us too? Herr Hofrat, what
stuff is this you are talking? I will suppose, however, that it is
love which haunts your brain; this soon comes to rights in marriage;
otherwise I should be apprehensive that you too had fallen into some
shade of madness, most honored Herr Hofrat; then what would become
of the future branches of the family, inheriting the _malum_ of their
parents? But now I give my paternal blessing to this happy union, and
permit you as bride and bridegroom to take a kiss."
This happened forthwith; and thus before the presented soup had
grown cold, was a formal betrothment concluded. In a few weeks, Frau
Hofrätin Heerbrand was actually, as she had been in vision, sitting in
the balcony of a fine house in the Neumarkt, and looking down with a
smile on the beaux, who, passing by, turned their glasses up to her,
and said: "She is a heavenly woman, the Hofrätin Heerbrand."
TWELFTH VIGIL
Account of the Freehold Property to which Anselmus removed, as
son-in-law of Archivarius Lindhorst; and how he lives there with
Serpentina. Conclusion.
How deeply did I feel, in the depth of my heart, the blessedness of
the student Anselmus, who now, indissolubly united with his gentle
Serpentina, has withdrawn to the mysterious Land of Wonders,
recognized by him as the home toward which his bosom, filled with
strange forecastings, had always longed. But in vain was all my
striving to set before thee, kind reader, those glories with which
Anselmus is encompassed, or even in the faintest degree to shadow them
forth to thee in words. Reluctantly I could not but acknowledge the
feebleness of my every expression. I felt myself enthralled amid
the paltriness of every-day life; I sickened in tormenting
dissatisfaction; I glided about like a dreamer; in brief, I fell into
that condition of the student Anselmus, which, in the Fourth Vigil, I
have endeavored to set before thee. It grieved me to the heart, when I
glanced over the Eleven Vigils, now happily accomplished, and thought
that to insert the Twelfth, the keystone of the whole, would never be
vouchsafed me. For whensoever, in the night season, I set myself to
complete the work, it was as if mischievous Spirits (they might be
relations, perhaps cousins german, of the slain witch) held a polished
glittering piece of metal before me, in which I beheld my own mean
Self, pale, overwatched, and melancholic, like Registrator Heerbrand
after his bout of punch. Then I threw down my pen, and hastened to
bed, that I might behold the happy Anselmus and the fair Serpentina,
at least in my dreams. This had lasted for several days and nights,
when at length quite unexpectedly I received a note from Archivarius
Lindhorst, in which he addressed me as follows:
"Respected Sir--It is well known to me that you have written down, in
Eleven Vigils, the singular fortunes of my good son-in-law Anselmus,
whilom student, now poet; and are at present cudgeling your brains
very sore, that in the Twelfth and Last Vigil you may tell somewhat of
his happy life in Atlantis, where he now lives with my daughter on
the pleasant Freehold which I possess in that country. Now,
notwithstanding I much regret that hereby my own peculiar nature is
unfolded to the reading world; seeing it may, in my office as Privy
Archivarius, expose me to a thousand inconveniences; nay, in the
Collegium even give rise to the question: How far a Salamander can
justly, and with binding consequences, plight himself by oath, as a
Servant of the State, and how far, on the whole, important affairs may
be intrusted to him, since, according to Gabalis and Swedenborg,
the Spirits of the Elements are not to be trusted at
all?--notwithstanding, my best friends must now avoid my embrace;
fearing lest, in some sudden exuberance, I dart out a flash or two,
and singe their hair-curls, and Sunday frocks; notwithstanding all
this, I say, it is still my purpose to assist you in the completion of
the Work, since much good of me and of my dear married daughter (would
the other two were off my hands also!) has therein been said. Would
you write your Twelfth Vigil, therefore, then descend your cursed five
pair of stairs, leave your garret, and come over to me. In the blue
palm-tree room, which you already know, you will find fit writing
materials; and you can then, in a few words, specify to your readers
what you have seen--a better plan for you than any long-winded
description of a life which you know only by hearsay.
With esteem, your obedient servant,
THE SALAMANDER LINDHORST,
P.T. Royal Privy Archivarius."
This truly somewhat rough, yet on the whole friendly note from
Archivarius Lindhorst, gave me high pleasure. Clear enough it
seemed, indeed, that the singular manner in which the fortunes of his
son-in-law had been revealed to me, and which I, bound to silence,
must conceal even from thee, kind reader, was well known to this
peculiar old gentleman; yet he had not taken it so ill as I might
readily have apprehended. Nay, here was he offering me his helpful
hand in the completion of my work; and from this I might justly
conclude that at bottom he was not averse to have his marvelous
existence in the world of spirits thus divulged through the press.
"It may be," thought I, "that he himself expects from this measure,
perhaps, to get his two other daughters the sooner married; for who
knows but a spark may fall in this or that young man's breast, and
kindle a longing for the green Snake; whom, on Ascension-day, under
the elder-bush, he will forthwith seek and find? From the woe which
befell Anselmus, when inclosed in the glass bottle, he will take
warning to be doubly and trebly on his guard against all doubt and
unbelief."
Precisely at eleven o'clock I extinguished my study-lamp and glided
forth to Archivarius Lindhorst, who was already waiting for me in the
lobby.
"Are you there, my worthy friend? Well, this is what I like, that you
have not mistaken my good intentions; do but follow me!"
And with this he led the way through the garden, now filled with
dazzling brightness, into the azure chamber, where I observed the same
violet table at which Anselmus had been writing.
Archivarius Lindhorst disappeared, but soon came back, carrying in his
hand a fair golden goblet out of which a high blue flame was sparkling
up. "Here," said he, "I bring you the favorite drink of your friend
the Bandmaster, Johannes Kreisler.[45] It is burning arrack, into
which I have thrown a little sugar. Sip a touch or two of it; I will
doff my nightgown, and, to amuse myself and enjoy your worthy company
while you sit looking and writing, shall just bob up and down a little
in the goblet."
"As you please, honored Herr Archivarius," answered I: "but if I am to
ply the liqueur, you will get none."
"Don't fear that, my good fellow," cried the Archivarius; then hastily
threw off his nightgown, mounted, to my no small amazement, into the
goblet, and vanished in the blaze. Without fear, softly blowing black
the flame, I partook of the drink; it was truly delicious!
Stir not the emerald leaves of the palm-trees in soft sighing and
rustling, as if kissed by the breath of the morning wind? Awakened
from their sleep, they move and mysteriously whisper of the wonders
which, from the far distance, approach like tones of melodious harps!
The azure rolls from the walls, and floats like airy vapor to and
fro; but dazzling beams shoot through the perfume which, whirling
and dancing, as in jubilee of childlike sport, mounts and mounts to
immeasurable heights, and vaults over the palm-trees. But brighter and
brighter shoots beam on beam, till in bright sunshine and boundless
expanse opens the grove where I behold Anselmus. Here glowing
hyacinths, and tulips, and roses, lift their fair heads; and their
perfumes, in loveliest sound, call to the happy youth: "Wander, wander
among us, our beloved; for thou understandest us! Our perfume is the
Longing of Love; we love thee, and are thine forevermore!" The golden
rays burn in glowing tones: "We are Fire, kindled by Love. Perfume is
Longing; but Fire is Desire: and dwell we not in thy bosom? We are thy
own!" The dark bushes, the high trees, rustle and sound: "Come to
us, thou loved, thou happy one! Fire is Desire; but Hope is our cool
Shadow. Lovingly we rustle round thy head; for thou understandest us,
because Love dwells in thy breast!" The fountains and brooks murmur
and patter. "Loved one, walk not so quickly by; look into our crystal!
Thy image dwells in us, which we preserve with Love, for thou hast
understood us." In the triumphal choir, bright birds are singing:
"Hear us! Hear us! We are Joy, we are Delight, the rapture of Love!"
But longingly Anselmus turns his eyes to the Glorious Temple, which
rises behind him in the distance. The artful pillars seem trees; and
the capitals and friezes acanthus leaves, which in wondrous wreaths
and figures form splendid decorations. Anselmus walks to the Temple;
he views with inward delight the variegated marble, the steps with
their strange veins of moss. "Ah, no!" cries he, as if in the excess
of rapture, "she is not far from me now; she is near!" Then advances
Serpentina, in the fulness of beauty and grace, from the Temple;
she bears the Golden Pot, from which a bright Lily has sprung. The
nameless rapture of infinite longing glows in her bright eyes; she
looks at Anselmus, and says: "Ah! Dearest, the Lily has sent forth her
bowl; what we longed for is fulfilled; is there a happiness to equal
ours?" Anselmus clasps her with the tenderness of warmest ardor; the
Lily burns in flaming beams over his head. And louder move the trees
and bushes; clearer and gladder play the brooks; the birds, the
shining insects dance in the waves of perfume; a gay, bright rejoicing
tumult, in the air, in the water, in the earth, is holding the
festival of Love! Now rush sparkling streaks, gleaming over all the
bushes; diamonds look from the ground like shining eyes; high gushes
spurt from the wells; strange perfumes are wafted hither on sounding
wings; they are the Spirits of the Elements, who do homage to the
Lily, and proclaim the happiness of Anselmus. Then Anselmus raises his
head, as if encircled with a beamy glory. Is it looks? Is it words?
Is it song? You hear the sound: "Serpentina! Belief in thee, Love of
thee, has unfolded to my soul the inmost spirit of Nature! Thou hast
brought me the Lily, which sprung from Gold, from the primeval Force
of the earth, before Phosphorus had kindled the spark of Thought; this
Lily is Knowledge of the sacred Harmony of all Beings; and in this do
I live in highest blessedness forevermore. Yes, I, thrice happy,
have perceived what was highest; I must indeed love thee forever, O
Serpentina! Never shall the golden blossoms of the Lily grow pale;
for, like Belief and Love, Knowledge is eternal."
For the vision, in which I had now beheld Anselmus bodily, in his
Freehold of Atlantis, I stand indebted to the arts of the Salamander;
and most fortunate was it that, when all had melted into air, I found
a paper lying on the violet table, with the foregoing statement of the
matter, written fairly and distinctly by my own hand. But now I felt
myself as if transpierced and torn in pieces by sharp sorrow. "Ah,
happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the burden of week-day life, who
in the love of thy kind Serpentina fliest with bold pinion, and now
livest in rapture and joy on thy Freehold in Atlantis! while I--poor
I!--must soon, nay, in a few moments, leave even this fair hall, which
itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis, and again be transplanted
to my garret, where, enthralled among the pettinesses of necessitous
existence, my heart and my sight are so bedimmed with thousand
mischiefs, as with thick fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be
beheld by me."
Then Archivarius Lindhorst patted me gently on the shoulder, and said:
"Soft, soft, my honored friend! Lament not so! Were you not even now
in Atlantis, and have you not at least a pretty little copyhold Farm
there, as the poetical possession of your inward sense? And is the
blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a Living in Poesy? Can aught
else but Poesy reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Beings, as
the deepest secret of Nature?"
_FRIEDRICH BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ_
* * * * *
SELECTIONS FROM UNDINE[46] (1811)
TRANSLATED BY F.E. BUNNETT
CHAPTER VIII
The Day after the wedding
The fresh light of the morning awoke the young married pair. Undine
hid bashfully beneath her covers while Huldbrand lay still, absorbed
in deep meditation. Wonderful and horrible dreams had disturbed
Huldbrand's rest; he had been haunted by spectres, who, grinning at
him by stealth, had tried to disguise themselves as beautiful women,
and from beautiful women they all at once assumed the faces of
dragons, and when he started up from these hideous visions the
moonlight shone pale and cold into the room; terrified he looked at
Undine on whose bosom he fell asleep and who still lay in unaltered
beauty and grace. Then he would press a light kiss upon her rosy lips
and would fall asleep again only to be awakened by new terrors.
After he had reflected on all this, now that he was fully awake, he
reproached himself for any doubt that could have led him into error
with regard to his beautiful wife. He begged her to forgive him for
the injustice he had done her, but she only held out to him her fair
hand, sighed deeply, and remained silent. But a glance of exquisite
fervor, such as he had never seen before, beamed from her eyes,
carrying with it the full assurance that Undine bore him no ill-will.
He then rose cheerfully and left her, to join his friends in the
common apartment.
He found the three sitting round the hearth with an air of anxiety,
as if they dared not venture to speak aloud. The priest seemed to be
praying in his inmost spirit that all evil might be averted. When,
however, they saw the young husband come forth so cheerfully, the
careworn expression of their faces vanished.
The old fisherman even began to tease the knight, but in so chaste and
modest a manner that the aged wife herself smiled good-humoredly as
she listened to them. Undine at length made her appearance. All rose
to meet her and all stood still with surprise, for the young wife
seemed so strange to them and yet the same. The priest was the first
to advance toward her, with paternal affection beaming in his face,
and, as he raised his hand to bless her, the beautiful woman sank
reverently on her knees before him. With a few humble and gracious
words she begged him to forgive her for any foolish things she might
have said the evening before, and entreated him in an agitated tone
to pray for the welfare of her soul. She then rose, kissed her
foster-parents, and thanking them for all the goodness they had shown
her, she exclaimed, "Oh, I now feel in my innermost heart, how much,
how infinitely much, you have done for me, dear, kind people!" She
could not at first desist from her caresses, but scarcely had she
perceived that the old woman was busy in preparing breakfast than she
went to the hearth, cooked and arranged the meal, and would not suffer
the good old mother to take the least trouble.
She continued thus throughout the whole day, quiet, kind, and
attentive--at once a little matron and a tender bashful girl. The
three who had known her longest expected every moment to see some
whimsical vagary of her capricious spirit burst forth; but they waited
in vain for it. Undine remained as mild and gentle as an angel. The
holy father could not take his eyes from her, and he said repeatedly
to the bridegroom, "The goodness of heaven, sir, has intrusted a
treasure to you yesterday through me, unworthy as I am; cherish it as
you ought, and it will promote your temporal and eternal welfare."
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH BARON DE LA MOTTE-FOUQUÉ.]
Toward evening Undine was hanging on the knight's arm with humble
tenderness, and drew him gently out of the door where the declining
sun was shining pleasantly on the fresh grass and upon the tall
slender stems of the trees. The eyes of the young wife were moist,
as with the dew of sadness and love, and a tender and fearful secret
seemed hovering on her lips--which, however, was disclosed only by
scarcely audible sighs. She led her husband onward and onward in
silence; when he spoke she answered him only with looks, in which,
it is true, there lay no direct reply to his inquiries, but a whole
heaven of love and timid devotion. Thus they reached the edge of
the swollen forest-stream, and the knight was astonished to see it
rippling along in gentle waves, without a trace of its former wildness
and swell. "By the morning, it will be quite dry," said the beautiful
wife, in a regretful tone, "and you can then travel away wherever you
will, without anything to hinder you."
"Not without you, my little Undine," replied the knight, laughing;
"remember, even if I wished to desert you, the church, and the
spiritual powers, and the emperor, and the empire, would interpose and
bring the fugitive back again."
"All depends upon you, all depends upon you," whispered his wife, half
weeping and half smiling. "I think, however, nevertheless, that you
will keep me with you; I love you so heartily. Now carry me across to
that little island that lies before us. The matter shall be decided
there. I could easily indeed glide through the rippling waves, but it
is so restful in your arms, and, if you are to cast me off, I shall
have sweetly rested in them once more for the last time." Huldbrand,
full as he was of strange fear and emotion, knew not what to reply. He
took her in his arms and carried her across, remembering now for the
first time that this was the same little island from which he had
borne her back to the old fisherman on that first night. On the
farther side he put her down on the soft grass, and was on the point
of placing himself lovingly near his beautiful burden when she said,
"No, there, opposite to me! I will read my sentence in your eyes,
before your lips speak; now, listen attentively to what I will relate
to you!" And she began:
"You must know, my loved one, that there are beings in the elements
which appear almost like you mortals, and which rarely allow
themselves to become visible to your race. Wonderful salamanders
glitter and sport in the flames; lean and malicious gnomes dwell deep
within the earth; spirits, belonging to the air, wander through the
forests; and a vast family of water spirits live in the lakes and
streams and brooks. In resounding domes of crystal, through which the
sky looks in with its sun and stars, these latter spirits find their
beautiful abode; lofty trees of coral, with blue and crimson fruits,
gleam in the gardens; they wander over the pure sand of the sea, and
among lovely variegated shells, and amid all exquisite treasures of
the old world, which the present is no longer worthy to enjoy; all
these the floods have covered with their secret veils of silver, and
the noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by
the loving waters which allure from them many a beautiful moss-flower
and entwining cluster of sea-grass. Those, however, who dwell there,
are very fair and lovely to behold, and for the most part are more
beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman has been so fortunate
as to surprise some tender mermaid, as she rose above the waters and
sang. He would then tell afar of her beauty, and such wonderful beings
have been given the name of Undines. You, moreover, are now actually
beholding an Undine."
The knight tried to persuade himself that his beautiful wife was
under the spell of one of her strange humors and that she was taking
pleasure in teasing him with one of her extravagant inventions. But
repeatedly as he said this to himself, he could not believe it for a
moment; a strange shudder passed through him; unable to utter a word,
he stared at the beautiful narrator with an immovable gaze. Undine
shook her head sorrowfully, drew a deep sigh, and then proceeded.
"Our condition would be far superior to that of you human beings--for
human beings we call ourselves, being similar to them in form and
culture--but there is one evil peculiar to us. We and our like in the
other elements vanish into dust and pass away, body and spirit,
so that not a vestige of us remains behind; and when you mortals
hereafter awake to a purer life we remain with the sand and the sparks
and the wind and the waves. Hence we have also no souls; the element
moves us and is often obedient to us while we live, though it scatters
us to dust when we die; and we are merry, without having aught to
grieve us--merry as the nightingales and little gold-fishes and other
pretty children of nature. But all beings aspire to be higher than
they are. Thus my father, who is a powerful water-prince in the
Mediterranean Sea, desired that his only daughter should become
possessed of a soul, even though she must then endure many of the
sufferings of those thus endowed. Such as we, however, can obtain a
soul only by the closest union of love with one of your human race.
I am now possessed of a soul, and my soul I owe you, my inexpressibly
beloved one, and it will ever thank you if you do not make my whole
life miserable. For what is to become of me if you avoid and reject
me? Still I would not retain you by deceit. And if you mean to reject
me do so now, and return alone to the shore. I will dive into this
brook, which is my uncle; and here in the forest, far removed from
other friends, he passes his strange and solitary life. He is,
however, powerful, and is esteemed and beloved by many great streams;
and as he brought me hither to the fisherman, a light-hearted,
laughing child, he will take me back again to my parents, a loving,
suffering, and soul-endowed woman."
She was about to say still more, but Huldbrand embraced her with the
most heartfelt emotion and love, and bore her back again to the shore.
It was not till he reached it that he swore, amid tears and kisses,
never to forsake his sweet wife, calling himself more happy than the
Greek sculptor Pygmalion, whose beautiful statue received life from
Venus and became his loved one. In endearing confidence Undine walked
back to the cottage, leaning on his arm, and feeling now for the first
time with all her heart how little she ought to regret the forsaken
crystal palaces of her mysterious father.
CHAPTER XIII
How they lived at Castle Ringstetten
The writer of this story, both because it moves his own heart and
because he wishes it to move that of others, begs you, dear reader, to
pardon him if he now briefly passes over a considerable space of time,
only cursorily mentioning the events that marked it. He knows well
that he might portray according to the rules of art, step by step, how
Huldbrand's heart began to turn from Undine to Bertalda; how Bertalda
more and more responded with ardent love to the young knight, and how
they both looked upon the poor wife as a mysterious being rather to
be feared than pitied; how Undine wept, and how her tears stung the
knight's heart with remorse without awakening his former love, so that
though he at times was kind and endearing to her, a cold shudder
would soon draw him from her and he would turn to his fellow-mortal,
Bertalda. All this the writer knows might be fully detailed, and
perhaps ought to have been so; but such a task would have been too
painful, for similar things have been known to him by sad experience,
and he shrinks from their shadow even in remembrance. You know
probably a like feeling, dear reader, for such is the lot of mortal
man. Happy are you if you have received rather than inflicted the
pain, for in such things it is more blessed to receive than to give.
If it be so, such recollections will bring only a feeling of sorrow
to your mind, and perhaps a tear will trickle down your cheek over
the faded flowers that once caused you such delight. But let that be
enough. We will not pierce our hearts with a thousand separate things,
but only briefly state, as I have just said, how matters were.
Poor Undine was very sad, and the other two were not to be called
happy. Bertalda, especially, thought that she could trace the effect
of jealousy on the part of the injured wife whenever her wishes
were in any way thwarted. She had therefore habituated herself to an
imperious demeanor, to which Undine yielded in sorrowful submission,
and the now blinded Huldbrand usually encouraged this arrogant
behavior in the strongest manner. But the circumstance that most of
all disturbed the inmates of the castle was a variety of wonderful
apparitions which met Huldbrand and Bertalda in the vaulted galleries
of the castle, and which had never been heard of before as haunting
the locality. The tall white man, in whom Huldbrand recognized only
too plainly Uncle Kühleborn, and Bertalda the spectral master of the
fountain, often passed before them with a threatening aspect, and
especially before Bertalda, on so many occasions that she had several
times been made ill with terror and had frequently thought of quitting
the castle. But still she stayed there, partly because Huldbrand was
so dear to her, and she relied on her innocence, no words of love
having ever passed between them, and partly also because she knew
not whither to direct her steps. The old fisherman, on receiving the
message from the lord of Ringstetten that Bertalda was his guest, had
written a few lines in an almost illegible hand but as well as his
advanced age and long disuse would admit of. "I have now become," he
wrote, "a poor old widower, for my dear and faithful wife is dead.
However lonely I now sit in my cottage, Bertalda is better with you
than with me. Only let her do nothing to harm my beloved Undine!
She will have my curse if it be so." The last words of this letter
Bertalda flung to the winds, but she carefully retained the part
respecting her absence from her father--just as we are all wont to do
in similar circumstances.
One day, when Huldbrand had just ridden out, Undine summoned the
domestics of the family and ordered them to bring a large stone and
carefully to cover with it the magnificent fountain which stood in the
middle of the castle-yard. The servants objected that it would oblige
them to bring water from the valley below. Undine smiled sadly. "I am
sorry, my people," she replied, "to increase your work. I would
rather myself fetch up the pitchers, but this fountain must be closed.
Believe me that it cannot be otherwise, and that it is only by so
doing that we can avoid a greater evil."
The whole household were glad to be able to please their gentle
mistress; they made no further inquiry, but seized the enormous stone.
They were just raising it in their hands and were already poising it
over the fountain, when Bertalda came running up and called out to
them to stop, as it was from this fountain that the water was brought
which was so good for her complexion and she would never consent to
its being closed. Undine, however, although gentle as usual, was this
time more than usually firm. She told Bertalda that it was her due, as
mistress of the house, to arrange her household as she thought best,
and that, in this, she was accountable to no one but her lord and
husband. "See, oh, pray see," exclaimed Bertalda, in an angry yet
uneasy tone, "how the poor beautiful water is curling and writhing at
being shut out from the bright sunshine and from the cheerful sight
of the human face, for whose mirror it was created!" The water in the
fountain was indeed wonderfully agitated and hissing; it seemed as if
something within were struggling to free itself, but Undine only the
more earnestly urged the fulfilment of her orders. The earnestness was
scarcely needed. The servants of the castle were as happy in obeying
their gentle mistress as in opposing Bertalda's haughty defiance; and
in spite of all the rude scolding and threatening of the latter, the
stone was soon firmly lying over the opening of the fountain. Undine
leaned thoughtfully over it and wrote with her beautiful fingers on
its surface. She must, however, have had something very sharp and
corrosive in her hand, for when she turned away and the servants
drew near to examine the stone, they perceived all sorts of strange
characters upon it, which none of them had seen there before.
Bertalda received the knight, on his return home in the evening, with
tears and complaints of Undine's conduct. He cast a serious look at
his poor wife, and she looked down in great distress; yet she said
with great composure, "My lord and husband does not reprove even a
bond-slave without a hearing, how much less, then, his wedded wife?"
"Speak," said the knight with a gloomy countenance, "what induced you
to act so strangely?"
"I should like to tell you when we are quite alone," sighed Undine.
"You can tell me just as well in Bertalda's presence," was the
rejoinder.
"Yes, if you command me," said Undine; "but command it not. Oh pray,
pray command it not!" She looked so humble, so sweet, so obedient,
that the knight's heart felt a passing gleam from better times. He
kindly placed her arm within his own and led her to his apartment,
when she began to speak as follows:
"You already know, my beloved lord, something of my evil uncle,
Kühleborn, and you have frequently been displeased at meeting him in
the galleries of this castle. He has several times frightened Bertalda
into illness. This is because he is devoid of soul, a mere elemental
mirror of the outward world, without the power of reflecting the world
within. He sees, too, sometimes, that you are dissatisfied with me;
that I, in my childishness, am weeping at this, and that Bertalda
perhaps is at the very same moment laughing. Hence he imagines various
discrepancies in our home life, and in many ways mixes unbidden with
our circle. What is the good of my reproving him? What is the use of
my sending him angrily away? He does not believe a word I say. His
poor nature has no idea that the joys and sorrows of love have so
sweet a resemblance, and are so closely linked that no power can
separate them. Amid tears a smile shines forth, and a smile allures
tears from their secret chambers."
She looked up at Huldbrand, smiling and weeping; and he again
experienced within his heart all the charm of his old love. She felt
this, and, pressing him more tenderly to her, she continued amid tears
of joy, "As the disturber of our peace was not to be dismissed with
words, I have been obliged to shut the door upon him. And the only
door by which he obtains access to us, is that fountain. He is at odds
with the other water-spirits in the neighborhood, counting from the
adjacent valleys, and his kingdom only recommences further off on the
Danube, into which some of his good friends direct their course. For
this reason I had the stone placed over the opening of the fountain,
and I inscribed characters upon it which cripple all my uncle's power,
so that he can now neither intrude upon you, nor upon me, nor upon
Bertalda. Human beings, it is true, can raise the stone again with
ordinary effort, in spite of the characters inscribed on it; the
inscription does not hinder them. If you wish, therefore, follow
Bertalda's desire, but, truly, she knows not what she asks! The
ill-bred Kühleborn has set his mark especially upon her; and if this
or that came to pass which he has predicted to me and which might
indeed happen without your meaning any evil--ah! dear one, even you
would then be exposed to danger!"
Huldbrand felt deeply the generosity of his sweet wife, in her
eagerness to shut up her formidable protector while she had even been
chided for it by Bertalda. He pressed her therefore in his arms with
the utmost affection, and said with emotion, "The stone shall remain,
and all shall remain, now and ever, as you wish to have it, my sweet
little Undine."
She caressed him with humble delight as she heard the expressions
of love so long withheld, and then at length she said, "My dearest
friend, since you are so gentle and kind today, may I venture to ask
a favor of you? See now, it is just the same with you as it is with
summer. In the height of its glory summer puts on the flaming and
thundering crown of mighty storms and assumes the air of a king over
the earth. You too sometimes let your fury rise, and your eyes flash,
and your voice is angry, and this becomes you well, though I in my
folly may sometimes weep at it. But never, I pray you, behave thus
toward me on the water, or even when we are near it. You see, my
relatives would then acquire a right over me. They would unrelentingly
tear me from you in their rage because they would imagine that one of
their race was injured, and I should be compelled all my life to dwell
below in the crystal palaces, and should never be permitted to ascend
to you again; or they would send me up to you--and that, oh God, would
be infinitely worse. No, no, my beloved friend, do not let it come to
that, however dear poor Undine be to you." He promised solemnly to do
as she desired, and husband and wife returned from the apartment, full
of happiness and affection.
At that moment Bertalda appeared with some workmen to whom she had
already given orders, and said in the sullen tone which she had
assumed of late, "I suppose the secret conference is at an end, and
now the stone may be removed. Go out, workmen, and attend to it."
But the knight, angry at her impertinence, directed in short and very
decisive words that the stone should be left; he reproved Bertalda,
too, for her violence toward his wife. Whereupon the workmen withdrew,
smiling with secret satisfaction; while Bertalda, pale with rage,
hurried away to her rooms.
The hour for the evening repast arrived, and Bertalda was waited for
in vain. They sent after her, but the domestic found her apartments
empty, and only brought back with him a sealed letter addressed to the
knight. He opened it with alarm, and read: "I feel with shame that
I am only a poor fisher-girl. I will expiate my fault in having
forgotten this for a moment, by returning to the miserable cottage of
my parents. Farewell to you and your beautiful wife."
Undine was heartily distressed. She earnestly entreated Huldbrand to
hasten after their friend and bring her back again. Alas! she had no
need to urge him. His affection for Bertalda burst forth again with
vehemence. He hurried round the castle, inquiring if any one had seen
which way the beautiful fugitive had gone. He could learn nothing of
her and was already on his horse in the castle-yard, resolved to take
at a venture the road by which he had brought Bertalda hither. Just
then a page appeared, who assured him that he had met the lady on the
path to the Black Valley. Like an arrow the knight sprang through the
gate-way in the direction indicated, without hearing Undine's voice of
agony as she called to him from the window: "To the Black Valley! Oh,
not there! Huldbrand, don't go there! or, for Heaven's sake, take me
with you!" But when she perceived that all her calling was in vain,
she ordered her white palfrey to be saddled immediately and rode after
the knight without allowing any servant to accompany her.
CHAPTER XIV
How Bertalda returned home with the Knight
The Black Valley lies deep within the mountains. What it is now called
we do not know. At that time the people of the country gave it this
appellation on account of the deep obscurity in which the low land
lay, owing to the shadows of the lofty trees, and especially firs,
that grew there. Even the brook which bubbled between the rocks wore
the same dark hue, and dashed along with none of that gladness with
which streams are wont to flow that have the blue sky immediately
above them. Now, in the growing twilight of evening, it looked
altogether wild and gloomy between the heights. The knight trotted
anxiously along the edge of the brook, fearful at one moment that
by delay he might allow the fugitive to advance too far, and, at the
next, that by too great rapidity he might overlook her in case she
were concealing herself from him. Meanwhile he had already penetrated
quite a ways into the valley, and might soon hope to overtake the
maiden if he were on the right track, but the fear that this might not
be the case made his heart beat with anxiety. Where would the tender
Bertalda tarry through the stormy night, which was so fearful in the
valley, should he fail to find her? At length he saw something white
gleaming through the branches on the slope of the mountain. He
thought he recognized Bertalda's dress, and turned his course in that
direction. But his horse refused to go forward; it reared impatiently;
and its master, unwilling to lose a moment, and seeing moreover that
the copse was impassable on horseback, dismounted; then, fastening his
snorting steed to an elm-tree, he worked his way cautiously through
the bushes. The branches sprinkled his forehead and cheeks with the
cold drops of the evening dew; a distant roll of thunder was heard
murmuring from the other side of the mountains; everything looked so
strange that he began to feel a dread of the white figure which now
lay only a short distance from him on the ground. Still he could
plainly see that it was a woman, either asleep or in a swoon, and that
she was attired in long white garments such as Bertalda had worn
on that day. He stepped close up to her, made a rustling with the
branches, and let his sword clatter, but she moved not. "Bertalda!"
he exclaimed, at first in a low voice, and then louder and louder--but
still she heard not. At last, when he uttered the dear name with a
more powerful effort, a hollow echo from the mountain-caverns of the
valley indistinctly reverberated "Bertalda!" but still the sleeper
woke not. He bent down over her; the gloom of the valley and the
obscurity of approaching night would not allow him to distinguish her
features.
Just as he was stooping closer over her with a feeling of painful
doubt, a flash of lightning shot across the valley, he saw before him
a frightfully distorted countenance, and a hollow voice exclaimed,
"Give me a kiss, you enamoured swain!" Huldbrand sprang up with a
cry of horror, and the hideous figure rose with him. "Go home!" it
murmured; "wizards are on the watch. Go home, or I will have you!" and
it stretched out its long white arms toward him.
"Malicious Kühleborn!" cried the knight, recovering himself. "Hey,
'tis you, you goblin? There, take your kiss!" And he furiously hurled
his sword at the figure. But it vanished like vapor, and a gush of
water which wetted him through left the knight in no doubt as to the
foe with whom he had been engaged. "He wishes to frighten me back from
Bertalda," said he aloud to himself; "he thinks to terrify me with his
foolish tricks, and to make me give up the poor distressed girl to him
so that he can wreak his vengeance on her. But he shall not do
that, weak spirit of the elements as he is. No powerless phantom
may understand what a human heart can do when its best energies are
aroused." He felt the truth of his words, and that the very expression
of them had inspired his heart with fresh courage.
It seemed too as if fortune were on his side, for he had not reached
his fastened horse when he distinctly heard Bertalda's plaintive voice
not far distant, and could catch her weeping accents through the ever
increasing tumult of the thunder and tempest. He hurried swiftly
in the direction of the sound, and found the trembling girl just
attempting to climb the steep in order to escape in any way from the
dreadful gloom of the valley. He stepped, however, lovingly in her
path, and, bold and proud as her resolve had been before, she now felt
only too keenly the delight that the friend whom she so passionately
loved should rescue her from this frightful solitude, and that the
joyous life in the castle should be again open to her. She followed
almost unresisting, but so exhausted with fatigue that the knight
was glad to lead her to his horse, which he now hastily unfastened in
order to lift the fair fugitive upon it; and then, cautiously holding
the reins, he hoped to proceed through the uncertain shades of the
valley.
But the horse had become quite unmanageable from the wild apparition
of Kühleborn. Even the knight would have had difficulty in mounting
the rearing and snorting animal, but to place the trembling Bertalda
on its back was perfectly impossible. They determined therefore to
return home on foot. Leading the horse after him by the bridle, the
knight supported the tottering girl with his other hand. Bertalda
exerted all her strength to pass quickly through the fearful valley,
but weariness weighed her down like lead and every limb trembled,
partly from the terror she had endured when Kühleborn had pursued her,
and partly from her continued alarm at the howling of the storm and
the pealing of the thunder through the wooded mountain.
At last she slid from the supporting arm of her protector, and,
sinking down on the moss, exclaimed, "Let me lie here, my noble lord;
I suffer the punishment due to my folly, and I must now perish here
anyhow through weariness and dread."
"No, sweet friend, I will never leave you!" cried Huldbrand, vainly
endeavoring to restrain his furious steed; for, worse than before, it
now began to foam and rear with excitement, till at last the knight
was glad to keep the animal at a sufficient distance from the
exhausted maiden to save her from increasing fear. But scarcely had he
withdrawn a few paces with the wild steed than she began to call after
him in the most pitiful manner, believing that he was really going to
leave her in this horrible wilderness. He was utterly at a loss what
course to take. Gladly would he have given the excited beast its
liberty and have allowed it to rush away into the night and spend
its fury, had he not feared that in this narrow defile it might come
thundering with its iron-shod hoofs over the very spot where Bertalda
lay.
In the midst of this extreme perplexity and distress he heard with
delight the sound of a vehicle driving slowly down the stony road
behind them. He called out for help, and a man's voice replied,
promising assistance, but bidding him have patience; and, soon after,
two gray horses appeared through the bushes, and beside them the
driver in the white smock of a carter; a great white linen cloth was
next visible, covering the goods apparently contained in the wagon. At
a loud shout from their master the obedient horses halted. The driver
then came toward the knight and helped him restrain his foaming
animal. "I see well," said he, "what ails the beast. When I first
traveled this way my horses acted no better. The fact is, there is
an evil water-spirit haunting the place, and he takes delight in
this sort of mischief. But I have learned a charm; if you will let me
whisper it in your horse's ear he will stand at once just as quiet as
my gray beasts are doing there."
"Try your luck then, only help us quickly!" exclaimed the impatient
knight.
The wagoner then drew down the head of the rearing charger close to
his own, and whispered something in his ear. In a moment the animal
stood still and quiet, and his quick panting and reeking condition
were all that remained of his previous unmanageableness. Huldbrand had
no time to inquire how all this had been effected. He agreed with the
carter that he should take Bertalda on his wagon, where, as the man
assured him, there was a quantity of soft cotton bales upon which
she could be conveyed to Castle Ringstetten, and the knight was to
accompany them on horseback. But the horse appeared too much exhausted
by its past fury to be able to carry its master so far, so the Carter
persuaded Huldbrand to get into the wagon with Bertalda. The horse
could be tethered on behind. "We are going down hill," said he, "and
that will make it light for my gray beasts." The knight accepted
the offer and entered the wagon with Bertalda; the horse followed
patiently behind, and the wagoner, steady and attentive, walked by the
side.
In the stillness of the night, as its darkness deepened and the
subsiding tempest sounded more and more remote, encouraged by
the sense of security and their fortunate escape a confidential
conversation arose between Huldbrand and Bertalda. With flattering
words he reproached her for her daring flight; she excused herself
with humility and emotion, and from every word she said a gleam shone
forth which disclosed distinctly to the lover that the beloved was
his. The knight felt the sense of her words far more than he regarded
their meaning, and it was the sense alone to which he replied.
Presently the wagoner suddenly shouted with a loud voice. "Up, my
grays, up with your feet, keep together! Remember who you are!" The
knight leaned out of the wagon and saw that the horses were stepping
into the midst of a foaming stream or were already almost swimming,
while the wheels of the wagon were rushing round and gleaming like
mill-wheels, and the wagoner had climbed up in front in consequence of
the increasing waters.
"What sort of a road is this? It goes into the very middle of the
stream," cried Huldbrand to his guide.
"Not at all, sir," returned the other laughing, "it is just the
reverse; the stream goes into the very middle of our road. Look round
and see how every thing is covered by the water."
The whole valley indeed was suddenly filled with the surging flood,
that visibly increased. "It is Kühleborn, the evil water-spirit, who
wishes to drown us!" exclaimed the knight. "Have you no charm against
him, my friend?"
"I know indeed of one," returned the wagoner, "but I cannot and may
not use it until you know who I am."
"Is this a time for riddles?" cried the knight. "The flood is ever
rising higher, and what does it matter to me to know who you are?"
"It does matter to you, though," said the wagoner, "for I am
Kühleborn." So saying, he thrust his distorted face into the wagon
with a grin, but the wagon was a wagon no longer, the horses were not
horses--all was transformed to foam and vanished in the hissing waves,
and even the wagoner himself, rising as a gigantic billow, drew down
the vainly struggling horse beneath the waters, and then, swelling
higher and higher, swept over the heads of the floating pair, like
some liquid tower, threatening to bury them irrecoverably.
Just then the soft voice of Undine sounded through the uproar, the
moon emerged from the clouds, and by its light Undine was seen on
the heights above the valley. She rebuked, she threatened the floods
below; the menacing tower-like wave vanished, muttering and murmuring,
the waters flowed gently away in the moonlight, and, like a white
dove, Undine flew down from the height, seized the knight and
Bertalda, and bore them with her to a fresh, green, turfy spot on the
hill, where with choice refreshing restoratives she dispelled their
terrors and weariness; then she assisted Bertalda to mount the white
palfrey, on which she had herself ridden here, and thus all three
returned to Castle Ringstetten.
CHAPTER XV
The Journey to Vienna
After this last adventure they lived quietly and happily at the
castle. The knight more and more clearly perceived the heavenly
goodness of his wife, which had been so nobly exhibited by her pursuit
and her rescue in the Black Valley, where Kühleborn's power again
commenced; Undine herself felt that peace and security which is never
lacking to a mind so long as it is distinctly conscious of being on
the right path, and, besides, in the newly-awakened love and esteem of
her husband many a gleam of hope and joy shone upon her. Bertalda, on
the other hand, showed herself grateful, humble, and timid, without
regarding her conduct as anything meritorious. Whenever Huldbrand or
Undine were about to give her any explanation regarding the covering
of the fountain or the adventure in the Black Valley, she would
earnestly entreat them to spare her the recital, as she felt too much
shame at the recollection of the fountain and too much fear at the
remembrance of the Black Valley. She learned therefore nothing further
of either; and for what end was such knowledge necessary? Peace and
joy had visibly taken up their abode at Castle Ringstetten. They felt
secure on this point, and imagined that life could now produce nothing
but pleasant flowers and fruits.
In this happy condition of things winter had come and passed away, and
spring with its fresh green shoots and its blue sky was gladdening
the joyous inmates of the castle. Spring was in harmony with them,
and they with spring; what wonder then that its storks and swallows
inspired them also with a desire to travel? One day when they were
taking a pleasant walk to one of the sources of the Danube, Huldbrand
spoke of the magnificence of the noble river, how it widened as it
flowed through countries fertilized by its waters, how the charming
city of Vienna shone forth on its banks, and how with every step of
its course it increased in power and loveliness. "It must be glorious
to go down the river as far as Vienna!" exclaimed Bertalda, but
immediately relapsing into her present modesty and humility she paused
and blushed deeply.
This touched Undine deeply, and with the liveliest desire to give
pleasure to her friend she asked, "What hinders us from starting on
the little voyage?" Bertalda exhibited the greatest delight, and both
she and Undine began at once to picture in the brightest colors the
tour of the Danube. Huldbrand also gladly agreed to the prospect; only
he once whispered anxiously in Undine's ear, "But Kühleborn becomes
possessed of his power again out there!"
"Let him come," she replied with a smile; "I shall be there, and he
ventures upon none of his mischief before me." The last impediment was
thus removed; they prepared for the journey, and soon after set out
upon it with fresh spirits and the brightest hopes.
But wonder not, O man, if events always turn out different from what
we have intended! That malicious power, lurking for our destruction,
gladly lulls its chosen victim to sleep with sweet songs and golden
fairy tales; while on the other hand the rescuing messenger from
Heaven often knocks sharply and alarmingly at our door.
During the first few days of their voyage down the Danube they were
extremely happy. Everything grew more and more beautiful, as they
sailed further and further down the proudly flowing stream. But in a
region, otherwise so pleasant, and in the enjoyment of which they had
promised themselves the purest delight, the ungovernable Kühleborn
began, undisguisedly, to exhibit his power, which started again at
this point. This was indeed manifested in mere teasing tricks, for
Undine often rebuked the agitated waves or the contrary winds, and
then the violence of the enemy would be immediately submissive; but
again the attacks would be renewed, and again Undine's reproofs
would become necessary, so that the pleasure of the little party was
completely destroyed. The boatmen too were continually whispering to
one another in dismay and looking with distrust at the three strangers
whose servants even began more and more to forebode something uncanny
and to watch their masters with suspicious glances. Huldbrand often
said to himself, "This comes from like not being linked with like,
from a man uniting himself with a mermaid!" Excusing himself, as we
all love to do, he would often think indeed as he said this, "I did
not really know that she was a sea-maiden. Mine is the misfortune that
every step I take is disturbed and haunted by the wild caprices of her
race; but mine is not the guilt." By such thoughts as these he felt
himself in some measure strengthened, but, on the other hand, he felt
increasing ill-humor and almost animosity toward Undine. He would look
at her with an expression of anger, the meaning of which the poor
wife understood well. Wearied with this exhibition of displeasure and
exhausted by the constant effort to frustrate Kühleborn's artifices,
she sank one evening into a deep slumber, rocked soothingly by the
softly gliding bark.
Scarcely, however, had she closed her eyes when every one in the
vessel imagined he saw, in whatever direction he turned, a most
horrible human head; it rose out of the waves, not like that of a
person swimming, but perfectly perpendicular as if invisibly supported
upright on the watery surface and floating along in the same course
with the bark. Each wanted to point out to the other the cause of his
alarm, but each found the same expression of horror depicted on the
face of his neighbor, only that his hands and eyes were directed to a
different point where the monster, half laughing and half threatening,
rose before him. When, however, they all wished to make one another
understand what each saw, and all were crying out, "Look there--!
No--there!" the horrible heads all appeared simultaneously to their
view, and the whole river around the vessel swarmed with the most
hideous apparitions. The universal cry raised at the sight awoke
Undine. As she opened her eyes the wild crowd of distorted visages
disappeared. But Huldbrand was indignant at such unsightly jugglery.
He would have burst forth in uncontrolled imprecations had not Undine
said to him with a humble manner and a softly imploring tone, "For
God's sake, my husband, we are on the water; do not be angry with me
now." The knight was silent, and sat down absorbed in reverie. Undine
whispered in his ear, "Would it not be better, my love, if we gave up
this foolish journey and returned to Castle Ringstetten in peace?"
But Huldbrand murmured moodily, "So I must be a prisoner in my own
castle and be able to breathe only so long as the fountain is closed!
I would your mad kindred--" Undine lovingly pressed her fair hand upon
his lips. He paused, pondering in silence over much that Undine had
before said to him.
Bertalda had meanwhile given herself up to a variety of strange
thoughts. She knew a good deal of Undine's origin, and yet not the
whole, and the fearful Kühleborn especially had remained to her a
terrible but wholly unrevealed mystery. She had indeed never even
heard his name. Musing on these strange things, she unclasped,
scarcely conscious of the act; a gold necklace, which Huldbrand had
lately purchased for her of a traveling trader; half dreamingly she
drew it along the surface of the water, enjoying the light glimmer
it cast upon the evening-tinted stream. Suddenly a huge hand was
stretched out of the Danube, seizing the necklace and vanishing with
it beneath the waters. Bertalda screamed aloud, and a scornful laugh
resounded from the depths of the stream. The knight could now restrain
his anger no longer. Starting up, he inveighed against the river; he
cursed all who ventured to intrude upon his family and his life, and
challenged them, be they spirits or sirens, to show themselves before
his avenging sword.
Bertalda wept meanwhile for her lost ornament, which was so precious
to her, and her tears added fuel to the flame of the knight's anger,
while Undine held her hand over the side of the vessel, dipping it
into the water, softly murmuring to herself, and only now and then
interrupting her strange mysterious whisper, as she entreated her
husband, "My dearly loved one, do not scold me here; reprove others
if you will, but not me here. You know why!" And indeed, he restrained
the words of anger that were trembling on his tongue.
Presently in her wet hand which she had been holding under the waves
she brought up a beautiful coral necklace of so much brilliancy that
the eyes of all were dazzled by it. "Take this," said she, holding it
out kindly to Bertalda; "I have ordered this to be brought for you as
a compensation, and don't be grieved any more, my poor child."
But the knight sprang between them. He tore the beautiful ornament
from Undine's hand, hurled it again into the river, exclaiming in
passionate rage, "Have you then still a connection with them? In the
name of all the witches, remain among them with your presents and
leave us mortals in peace, you sorceress!" Poor Undine gazed at him
with fixed but tearful eyes, her hand still stretched out as when she
had offered her beautiful present so lovingly to Bertalda. She then
began to weep more and more violently, like a dear innocent child,
bitterly afflicted. At last, wearied out, she said: "Alas, sweet
friend, alas! farewell! They shall do you no harm; only remain true,
so that I may be able to keep them from you. I must, alas, go away; I
must go hence at this early stage of life. Oh woe, woe! What have you
done! Oh woe, woe!"
She vanished over the side of the vessel. Whether she plunged into the
stream or flowed away with it, they knew not; her disappearance was
like both and neither. Soon, however, she was completely lost sight of
in the Danube; only a few little waves kept whispering, as if sobbing,
round the boat, and they almost seemed to be saying: "Oh woe, woe! Oh,
remain true! Oh, woe!"
Huldbrand lay on the deck of the vessel, bathed in hot tears, and a
deep swoon presently cast its veil of forgetfulness over the unhappy
man.
_WILHELM HAUFF_
* * * * *
CAVALRYMAN'S MORNING SONG[47] (1826)
Crimson morn,
Shalt thou light me o'er Death's bourn?
Soon will ring the trumpet's call;
Then may I be marked to fall,
I and many a comrade brave!
Scarce enjoyed,
Pleasure drops into the void.
Yesterday on champing stallion;
Picked today for Death's battalion;
Couched tomorrow in the grave!
Ah! how soon
Fleeth grace and beauty's noon!
Hast thou pride in cheeks aglow,
Whereon cream and carmine flow?
Ah! the loveliest rose turns sere!
Therefore still
I respond to God's high will.
To the last stern fight I'll fit me;
If to Death I must submit me,
Dies a dauntless cavalier!
* * * * *
THE SENTINEL[48] (1827)
Lonely at night my watch I keep,
While all the world is hush'd in sleep.
Then tow'rd my home my thoughts will rove;
I think upon my distant love.
[Illustration: WILHELM HAUFF]
When to the wars I march'd away,
My hat she deck'd with ribbons gay;
She fondly press'd me to her heart,
And wept to think that we must part.
[Illustration: THE SENTINAL]
Truly she loves me, I am sure,
So ev'ry hardship I endure;
My heart beats warm, though cold's the night;
Her image makes the darkness bright.
Now by the twinkling taper's gleam,
Her bed she seeks, of me to dream,
But ere she sleeps she kneels to pray
For one who loves her far away.
For me those tears thou needst not shed;
No danger fills my heart with dread;
The pow'rs who dwell in heav'n above
Are ever watchful o'er thy love.
The bell peals forth from yon watch-tower;
The guard it changes at this hour.
Sleep well! sleep well! my heart's with thee;
And in your dreams remember me.
FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT
* * * * *
BARBAROSSA[49] (Between 1814 and 1817)
The ancient Barbarossa,
Friedrich, the Kaiser great,
Within the castle-cavern
Sits in enchanted state.
He did not die; but ever
Waits in the chamber deep,
Where hidden under the castle
He sat himself to sleep.
The splendor of the Empire
He took with him away,
And back to earth will bring it
When dawns the promised day.
The chair is ivory purest
Whereof he makes his bed;
The table is of marble
Whereon he props his head.
His beard, not flax, but burning
With fierce and fiery glow,
Right through the marble table
Beneath his chair does grow.
He nods in dreams and winketh
With dull, half-open eyes,
And once a page he beckons beckons--
A page that standeth by.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT]
He bids the boy in slumber
"O dwarf, go up this hour,
And see if still the ravens
Are flying round the tower;
And if the ancient ravens
Still wheel above us here,
Then must I sleep enchanted
For many a hundred year."
* * * * *
FROM MY CHILDHOOD DAYS[50] (1817, 1818)
From my childhood days, from my childhood days,
Rings an old song's plaintive tone--
Oh, how long the ways, oh, how long the ways
I since have gone!
What the swallow sang, what the swallow sang,
In spring or in autumn warm--
Do its echoes hang, do its echoes hang
About the farm?
"When I went away, when I went away,
Full coffers and chests were there;
When I came today, when I came today,
All, all was bare!"
Childish lips so wise, childish lips so wise,
With a lore as rich as gold,
Knowing all birds' cries, knowing all birds' cries,
Like the sage of old!
Ah, the dear old place--ah, the dear old place * * *
May its sweet consoling gleam
Shine upon my face, shine upon my face,
Once in a dream!
When I went away, when I went away,
Full of joy the world lay there;
When I came today, when I came today,
All, all was bare.
Still the swallows come, still the swallows come,
And the empty chest is filled--
But this longing dumb, but this longing dumb
Shall ne'er be stilled.
Nay, no swallow brings, nay, no swallow brings
Thee again where thou wast before--
Though the swallow sings, though the swallow sings,
Still as of yore.
"When I went away, when I went away,
Full coffers and chests were there;
When I came today, when I came today,
All, all was bare!"
* * * * *
THE SPRING OF LOVE[51] (1821)
Dearest, thy discourses steal
From my bosom's deep, my heart
How can I from thee conceal
My delight, my sorrow's smart?
Dearest, when I hear thy lyre
From its chains my soul is free.
To the holy angel quire
From the earth, O let us flee!
[Illustration: MEMORIES OF YOUTH]
Dearest, how thy music's charms
Waft me dancing through the sky!
Let me round thee clasp my arms,
Lest in glory I should die!
Dearest, sunny wreaths I wear,
Twined around me by thy lay.
For thy garlands, rich and rare,
O how can I thank thee? Say!
Like the angels I would be
Without mortal frame,
Whose sweet converse is like thought,
Sounding with acclaim;
Or like flowers in the dale;
Like the stars that glow,
Whose love-song's a beam, whose words
Like sweet odors flow;
Or like to the breeze of morn,
Waving round its rose,
In love's dallying caress
Melting as it blows.
But the love-lorn nightingale
Melteth not away;
She doth but with longing tones
Chant her plaintive lay.
I am, too, a nightingale,
Songless though I sing;
'Tis my pen that speaks, though ne'er
In the ear it ring.
Beaming images of thought
Doth the pen portray;
But without thy gentle smile
Lifeless e'er are they.
As thy look falls on the leaf,
It begins to sing,
And the prize that's due to love
In her ear doth ring.
Like a Memmon's statue now
Every letter seems,
Which in music wakes, when kissed
By the morning's beams.
* * * * *
"HE CAME TO MEET ME"[52] (1821)
He came to meet me
In rain and thunder;
My heart 'gan beating
In timid wonder.
Could I guess whither
Thenceforth together
Our path should run, so long asunder?
He came to meet me
In rain and thunder,
With guile to cheat me--
My heart to plunder.
Was't mine he captured?
Or his I raptured?
Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!
He came to meet me
In rain and thunder;
Spring-blessings greet me
Spring-blossoms under.
What though he leave me?
No partings grieve me--
No path can lead our hearts asunder.
* * * * *
THE INVITATION[53] (1821)
Thou, thou art rest
And peace of soul--
Thou woundst the breast
And makst it whole.
To thee I vow
'Mid joy or pain
My heart, where thou
Mayst aye remain.
Then enter free,
And bar the door
To all but thee
Forevermore.
All other woes
Thy charms shall lull;
Of sweet repose
This heart be full.
My worshipping eyes
Thy presence bright
Shall still suffice,
Their only light.
* * * * *
MURMUR NOT[54]
Murmur not and say thou art in fetters holden,
Murmur not that thou earth's heavy yoke must bear.
Say not that a prison is this world so golden--
'Tis thy murmurs only set its harsh walls there.
Question not how shall this riddle find its reading;
It will solve itself full soon without thine aid.
Say not love hath turned his back, and left thee bleeding--
Whom hath love deserted, hast thou heard it said?
If death tries to fright thee, fear not beyond measure;
He will flee from those who boldly face his frown.
Hunt not thou the fleeting deer of worldly pleasure--
Lion it will turn, and hunt the hunter down.
Chain thyself no longer, heart, to any treasure;
Then thou shalt not say thou art into fetters thrown.
* * * * *
A PARABLE[55] (1822)
In Syria walked a man one day
And led a camel on the way.
A sudden wildness seized the beast,
And as they strove its rage increased.
So fearsome grew its savagery
That for his life the man must flee.
And as he ran, he spied a cave
That one last chance of safety gave.
He heard the snorting beast behind
Come nearer--with distracted mind
Leaped where the cooling fountain sprang,
Yet not to fall, but catch and hang;
By lucky hap a bramble wild
Grew where the o'erhanging rocks were piled.
He saved himself by this alone,
And did his hapless state bemoan.
He looked above, and there was yet
Too close the furious camel's threat
That still of fearful rage was full.
He dropped his eyes toward the pool,
And saw within the shadows dim
A dragon's jaws agape for him--
A still more fierce and dangerous foe
If he should slip and fall below.
So, hanging midway of the two,
He spied a cause of terror new:
Where to the rock's deep crevice clung
The slender root on which he swung,
A little pair of mice he spied,
A black and white one side by side--
First one and then the other saw
The slender stem alternate gnaw.
They gnawed and bit with ceaseless toil,
And from the roots they tossed the soil.
As down it ran in trickling stream,
The dragon's eyes shot forth a gleam
Of hungry expectation, gazed
Where o'er him still the man was raised,
To see how soon the bush would fall,
The burden that it bore, and all.
That man in utmost fear and dread
Surrounded, threatened, hard bested,
In such a state of dire suspense
Looked vainly round for some defense.
And as he cast his bloodshot eye
First here, then there, saw hanging nigh
A branch with berries ripe and red;
Then longing mastered all his dread;
No more the camel's rage he saw,
Nor yet the lurking dragon's maw,
Nor malice of the gnawing mice,
When once the berries caught his eyes.
The furious beast might rage above,
The dragon watch his every move,
The mice gnaw on--naught heeded he,
But seized the berries greedily--
In pleasing of his appetite
The furious beast forgotten quite.
You ask, "What man could ever yet,
So foolish, all his fears forget?"
Then know, my friend, that man are you--
And see the meaning plain to view.
The dragon in the pool beneath
Sets forth the yawning jaws of death;
The beast from which you helpless flee
Is life and all its misery.
There you must hang 'twixt life and death
While in this world you draw your breath.
The mice, whose pitiless gnawing teeth
Will let you to the pool beneath
Fall down, a hopeless castaway,
Are but the change of night and day.
The black one gnaws concealed from sight
Till comes again the morning light;
From dawn until the eve is gray,
Ceaseless the white one gnaws away.
And, 'midst this dreadful choice of ills,
Pleasure of sense your spirit fills
Till you forget the terrors grim
That wait to tear you limb from limb,
The gnawing mice of day and night,
And pay no heed to aught in sight
Except to fill your mouth with fruit
That in the grave-clefts has its root.
* * * * *
EVENING SONG[56] (1823)
I stood on the mountain summit,
At the hour when the sun did set;
I mark'd how it hung o'er the woodland
The evening's golden net.
And, with the dew descending,
A peace on the earth there fell--
And nature lay hushed in quiet,
At the voice of the evening bell.
I said, "O heart, consider
What silence all things keep,
And with each child of the meadow
Prepare thyself to sleep!
"For every flower is closing
In silence its little eye;
And every wave in the brooklet
More softly murmureth by.
"The weary caterpillar
Hath nestled beneath the weeds;
All wet with dew now slumbers
The dragon-fly in the reeds.
"The golden beetle hath laid him
In a rose-leaf cradle to rock;
Now went to their nightly shelter
The shepherd and his flock.
"The lark from on high is seeking
In the moistened grass her nest;
The hart and the hind have laid them
In their woodland haunt to rest.
"And whoso owneth a cottage
To slumber hath laid him down;
And he that roams among strangers
In dreams shall behold his own."
And now doth a yearning seize me,
At this hour of peace and love,
That I cannot reach the dwelling,
The home that is mine, above.
* * * * *
CHIDHER[57] (1824)
Chidher, the ever youthful, told:
I passed a city, bright to see;
A man was culling fruits of gold,
I asked him how old this town might be.
He answered, culling as before
"This town stood ever in days of yore,
And will stand on forevermore!"
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way,
And of the town I found no trace;
A shepherd blew on a reed instead;
His herd was grazing on the place.
"How long," I asked, "is the city dead?"
He answered, blowing as before
"The new crop grows the old one o'er,
This was my pasture evermore!"
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way.
A sea I found, the tide was full,
A sailor emptied nets with cheer;
And when he rested from his pull,
I asked how long that sea was here.
Then laughed he with a hearty roar
"As long as waves have washed this shore
They fished here ever in days of yore."
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way.
I found a forest settlement,
And o'er his axe, a tree to fell,
I saw a man in labor bent.
How old this wood I bade him tell.
"'Tis everlasting, long before
I lived it stood in days of yore,"
He quoth; "and shall grow evermore."
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way.
I saw a town; the market-square
Was swarming with a noisy throng.
"How long," I asked, "has this town been there?
Where are wood and sea and shepherd's song?"
They cried, nor heard among the roar
"This town was ever so before,
And so will live forevermore!"
"Five hundred years from yonder day
I want to pass the selfsame way."
* * * * *
AT FORTY YEARS[58] (1832)
When for forty years we've climbed the rugged mountain,
We stop and backward gaze;
Yonder still we see our childhood's peaceful fountain,
And youth exulting strays.
One more glance behind, and then, new strength acquiring,
Staff grasped, no longer stay;
See, a further slope, a long one, still aspiring
Ere downward turns the way!
Take a brave long breath and toward the summit hie thee--
The goal shall draw thee on;
When thou think'st it least, the destined end is nigh thee--
Sudden, the journey's done!
* * * * *
BEFORE THE DOORS[59]
I went to knock at Riches' door;
They threw me a farthing the threshold o'er.
To the door of Love did I then repair--
But fifteen others already were there.
To Honor's castle I took my flight--
They opened to none but to belted knight.
The house of Labor I sought to win--
But I heard a wailing sound within.
To the house of Content I sought the way--
But none could tell me where it lay.
One quiet house I yet could name,
Where last of all, I'll admittance claim;
Many the guests that have knocked before,
But still--in the grave--there's room for more.
[Illustration: AUGUST GRAF VON PLATEN-HALLERMUND]
_AUGUST VON PLATEN-HALLERMUND_
* * * * *
THE PILGRIM BEFORE ST. JUST'S[60] (1819)
'Tis night, and tempests whistle o'er the moor;
Oh, Spanish father, ope the door!
Deny me not the little boon I crave,
Thine order's vesture, and a grave!
Grant me a cell within thy convent-shrine--
Half of this world, and more, was mine;
The head that to the tonsure now stoops down
Was circled once by many a crown;
The shoulders fretted now with shirt of hair
Did once the imperial ermine wear.
Now am I as the dead, e'er death is come,
And sink in ruins like old Rome.
* * * * *
THE GRAVE OF ALARIC[61] (1820)
On Busento's grassy banks a muffled chorus echoes nightly,
While the swirling eddies answer and the wavelets ripple lightly.
Up and down the river, shades of Gothic warriors watch are keeping,
For they mourn their people's hero, Alaric, with sobs of weeping.
All too soon and far from home and kindred here to rest they laid him,
While in youthful beauty still his flowing golden curls arrayed him.
And along the river's bank a thousand hands with eager striving
Labored long, another channel for Busento's tide contriving.
Then a cavern deep they hollowed in the river-bed depleted,
Placed therein the dead king, clad in proof, upon his charger seated.
O'er him and his proud array the earth they filled, and covered loosely,
So that on their hero's grave the water-plants would grow profusely.
And again the course they altered of Busento's waters troubled;
In its ancient channel rushed the current--foamed, and hissed, and bubbled.
And the Goths in chorus chanted: "Hero, sleep! Tiny fame immortal
Roman greed shall ne'er insult, nor break thy tomb's most sacred portal!"
Thus they sang, and paeans sounded high above the fight's commotion;
Onward roll, Busento's waves, and bear them to the farthest ocean!
* * * * *
REMORSE[62] (1820)
How I started up in the night, in the night,
Drawn on without rest or reprieval!
The streets with their watchmen were lost to my sight,
As I wandered so light
In the night, in the night,
Through the gate with the arch medieval.
[Illustration: THE MORNING HOUR]
The mill-brook rushed from its rocky height;
I leaned o'er the bridge in my yearning;
Deep under me watched I the waves in their flight,
As they glided so light
In the night, in the night,
Yet backward not one was returning.
O'erhead were revolving, so countless and bright,
The stars in melodious existence;
And with them the moon, more serenely bedight;
They sparkled so light
In the night, in the night,
Through the magical, measureless distance.
And upward I gazed in the night, in the night,
And again on the waves in their fleeting;
Ah woe! thou hast wasted thy days in delight;
Now silence, thou light,
In the night, in the night,
The remorse in thy heart that is beating.
* * * * *
WOULD I WERE FREE AS ARE MY DREAMS[63] (1822)
Would I were free as are my dreams,
Sequestered from the garish crowd
To glide by banks of quiet streams
Cooled by the shadow-drifting cloud!
Free to shake off this weary weight
Of human sin, and rest instead
On nature's heart inviolate--
All summer singing o'er my head!
There would I never disembark,
Nay, only graze the flowery shore
To pluck a rose beneath the lark,
Then go my liquid way once more,
And watch, far off, the drowsy lines
Of herded cattle crop and pass,
The vintagers among the vines,
The mowers in the dewy grass;
And nothing would I drink or eat
Save heaven's clear sunlight and the spring
Of earth's own welling waters sweet,
That never make the pulses sting.
* * * * *
SONNET[64] (1822)
Oh, he whose pain means life, whose life means pain,
May feel again what I have felt before;
Who has beheld his bliss above him soar
And, when he sought it, fly away again;
Who in a labyrinth has tried in vain,
When he has lost his way, to find a door;
Whom love has singled out for nothing more
Than with despondency his soul to bane;
Who begs each lightning for a deadly stroke,
Each stream to drown the heart that cannot heal
From all the cruel stabs by which it broke;
Who does begrudge the dead their beds like steel
Where they are safe from love's beguiling yoke--
He knows me quite, and feels what I must feel.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From Addresses on Religion (Discourse IV).]
[Footnote 2: This refers to the second book, which takes the form of a
dialogue between the inquirer and a Spirit.]
[Footnote 3: An allusion to the second book.]
[Footnote 4: The audience gathered in the building of the Royal
Academy at Berlin.--ED.]
[Footnote 5: J.G. Hamann. _Hellenistische Briefe_ I, 189.]
[Footnote 6: Goethe. _Werke_ (1840) xxx., 352. Mr. Ward's translation
of Goethe's "Essays on Art," p. 76.]
[Footnote 7: Selections translated by Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 8: Permission George Bell & Son, London.]
[Footnote 9: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company,
Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 10: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 11: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 12: Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.]
[Footnote 13: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 14: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 15: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 16: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 17: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 18: Translator: W.W. Skeat.]
[Footnote 19: Translator: Henry W. Longfellow.]
[Footnote 20: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 21: Translator: Percy Mackaye.]
[Footnote 22: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 23: Translator: W.W. Skeat. From _Representative German
Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 24: Translator: W.W. Skeat. From _Representative German
Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 25: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock &
Company, Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 26: Translator: W.H. Furness.]
[Footnote 27: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg]
[Footnote 28: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 29: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 30: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 31: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 32: Translator: W.H. Furness.]
[Footnote 33: Translator: Henry W. Longfellow. From _Representative
German Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 34: Translator: Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker. Permission William
Heinemann, London.]
[Footnote 35: Translator: C.G. Leland. From _Representative German
Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 36: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 37: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 38: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman]
[Footnote 39: Translator: Alfred Baskerville]
[Footnote 40: Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor
Kiliani. From _A Sheaf of Poems_, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.]
[Footnote 41: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 42: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 43: From the _Foreign Quarterly_]
[Footnote 44: Chapters 2, 6, 8.]
[Footnote 45: An imaginary musical enthusiast of whom Hoffmann has
written much; under the fiery, sensitive, wayward character of this
crazy bandmaster, presenting, it would seem, a shadowy likeness
of himself. The _Kreisleriana_ occupy a large space among these
_Fantasy-pieces_; and Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in _Kater
Murr_, Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the third and last
volume, Kreisler was to end, not in composure and illumination, as the
critics would have required, but in utter madness: a sketch of a wild,
flail-like scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bubbles, and
which had been intended to front the last title-page, was found
among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved and published in his _Life and
Remains_.]
[Footnote 46: Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig.]
[Footnote 47: Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.]
[Footnote 48: Translator: John Oxenford. From _Representative German
Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 49: Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor
Kiliani.
From _A Sheaf of Poems_, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.]
[Footnote 50: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.
This is a working-over of an old popular song in imitation of the
swallow's cry, found in various dialect-forms in different parts of
Germany. The most widespread version is:
Wenn ich wegzieh', wenn ich wegzieh',
Sind Kisten and Kasten voll!'
Wann ich wiederkomm', wann ich wiederkomm',
Ist alles verzehrt.]
[Footnote 51: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 52: Translator: Bayard Taylor. From _Representative German
Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 53: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 54: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 55: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 56: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. From _Book of German Songs_,
permission Ward, Lock & Company, Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 57: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 58: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 59: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company,
Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 60: Translator: Lord Lindsay. From _Ballads, Songs and
Poems_.]
[Footnote 61: Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor
Kiliani. From _A Sheaf of Poems_, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.]
[Footnote 62: Translator: Henry W. Longfellow. From _Representative
German Poems_, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 63: Translator: Percy MacKaye.]
[Footnote 64: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
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